


Immortal Beloved

by greywash



Series: Immortal Beloved [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Additional Warnings Apply, F/M, John is a Horndog, Jossed, M/M, Multiple Pairings, Sherlock's experiments are scientifically rigorous, Terrible ideas abound
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-31
Updated: 2011-12-31
Packaged: 2017-10-28 14:36:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/308919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greywash/pseuds/greywash
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mostly, John just wants Sherlock to leave off the prostitutes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Immortal Beloved

**Author's Note:**

> This story owes a tremendous amount to [](http://imogenedisease.livejournal.com/profile)[**imogenedisease**](http://imogenedisease.livejournal.com/) , [](http://mrsquizzical.livejournal.com/profile)[**mrsquizzical**](http://mrsquizzical.livejournal.com/) , and [](http://torakowalski.livejournal.com/profile)[**torakowalski**](http://torakowalski.livejournal.com/) for audiencing, beta-reading, and various Americanism-wranglings and Brit-pickings, performed with great grace and fortitude, and on very short notice. ♥
> 
> Spoilers through _The Great Game_. **Warnings for consent issues and disturbing content**. My full warnings policy is [in my profile](http://archiveofourown.org/users/greywash/profile#warnings); if you want more info or a clarification, please feel free to [email me](mailto:greywash@gmail.com).

The first prostitute that John knows about, for certain, is about eight months after he moves in, but the first one he suspects is earlier. Sherlock's always secretive about his movements, but not always in the same way; periodically, instead of simply being high-handed and tauntingly vague—which always makes John think Sherlock _wants_ him to ask—he simply goes blank: he spends an hour or two utterly still and silent, and then vanishes for a chunk of time for which he never gives any account or explanation. At first John doesn't notice, exactly. He doesn't generally expect his flatmates to post-mortem their days for him, but after a while Sherlock trains him to; Sherlock never does anything, John thinks, that he can't boast about later. John starts to notice the absences, and wonder about them, but never in a very serious way—not his business, really—but then, about a week after John's experience modeling the latest fashions in modern explosives, Sherlock vanishes for sixty-three hours.

The first day John's honestly a little relieved. He's always been forced out of solitude by circumstance, rather than sought out company directly; if he had been able to afford a flat on his own in the winter, he would've taken it. By evening on the second day, the thrill of not finding any new body parts in the fridge has worn off, and he's starting to worry; by ten a.m. on the third day he's called Lestrade twice, without much result. When Sherlock wanders in at half three, his hands shake as he slips off his coat, and John thinks: oh, right, drugs.

It makes Sherlock's abstract confessions real for him with such intensity and immediacy that it takes him a couple hours to realize he's actually wrong. He spends the whole time that Sherlock's in the shower wondering what he uses and the whole time Sherlock's making himself tea and breakfast trying to decide what to say. Then he watches Sherlock, barefoot, with his hair drying funny, wolf down overcooked eggs at four-thirty in the afternoon, and realizes a) that Sherlock, who eats about as much as the average lovesick Victorian maiden most days, is going at his food like a schoolboy home on holiday, and b) that Sherlock's mouth and chin are pink, rubbed raw. Sherlock would probably be disappointed that John's brain grasps futilely at straw after straw for the duration of half a piece of toast before it finally supplies, _beard burn_. John swallows. Not drugs, then—a _lover_. Which is somehow...a much stranger thought.

It isn't until Lestrade's reply to his last text— _sherlock home, all seems well?_ , which yields an enigmatic, _right._ —that John starts to wonder, really more about the logistics than about anything else. So Sherlock must have a lover...or lovers...with whom he has no kind of regular contact, since John knows more about Sherlock's texting habits than anyone really needs to...and who is (are?) apparently available for days-long sexual escapades, with no advance notice. The first possibility that springs to John's mind is _friend_ , but he dismisses that immediately; the second possibility is _one-night stand_ , but that would require that Sherlock go into a place like a pub or a nightclub or some other venue where one-night stands are an expected part of the experience, and moreover, given some of his previous vanishing acts, would require him to do so at ten in the morning. This in turn leads John to _prostitute_ , which he mostly sets aside because Sherlock appears to only handle cash under duress. He finally settles on _enemy (?) (!)_ , just because he can't come up with anything more likely, but it happens again and again and again, and Sherlock always returns in one piece, with no bruises or visible bite marks or bleeding wounds or any indication of any kind, in fact, of animosity in action. The unlikelihood of anyone who actively hates Sherlock spending that much time with Sherlock and not punching him pushes John back to _prostitute_ , which, baffling though it may be, seems, upon reflection, to be less baffling than the alternatives.

So. John has a flatmate who solves crime and visits hookers. John feels, really, like either or both of these things should disturb him, and honestly, sometimes, when he's holding one ice pack against his eye and another against his knee in a cab with Sherlock, who has his arms crossed and is staring out of the window and refusing to speak to John for his stupidity in doing a stupid, stupid thing with his stupid leg and his stupid arm that involved preventing a stupid criminal from shooting Sherlock right in his stupid head while also, unfortunately, allowing said criminal to escape—well, sometimes John feels like he should be more bothered by the hookers, that's all. But he isn't, really, not much; he was far more disturbed by the idea that Sherlock had been on a sixty-three-hour drug binge than he is knowing that Sherlock spent it getting seen to by a professional. After Sarah stops calling back and Jenn breaks it to him gently and Laurel comes around twice, exactly, John starts to wonder, a little (not seriously) if he can get a referral. Which is right about the time they get the identity theft case, which ends at the end of September with an arrest (Henry Fuller), a concussion and sixteen stitches (John), and a broken leg (Sherlock).

"It could be worse," John tells him.

"I have to spend at least ten weeks with my _leg_ in a _cast_ ," Sherlock tells him. "I have to use _crutches_. Tell me how this could be worse."

"It could be a compound fracture," John tells him. "In fact, I could _make_ it a compound fracture."

"Oh, please, false threats don't impress me," Sherlock scoffs, and then reaches up and presses against the side of John's neck, a little too hard. "How's the head?"

"Ow," John says, pushing his hand away. "It's fine. It'll be fine. Drink your tea."

It takes eight days for Sherlock to go from obnoxious to unbearable. Finally, on the ninth day, Sherlock says, "I have to spend _nine more weeks_ in this bloody thing—" for the twelfth time in an hour and John blurts out, "Can I please call someone for you?"

Sherlock blinks. "What?"

"Your—a—a friend." John licks his lips. "They make house calls, yes? Can I call one for you? Because, I mean it, if you're going to be like this for the next two months, I—"

"You know about that?" Sherlock asks, and then says, "Well done."

"Oh, shut up, it wasn't exactly rocket science," John says.

"I don't have his phone number," Sherlock tells him.

"Oh." John stuffs his hands in his pockets.

"But I can tell you where to find him," Sherlock adds.

Which is how John ends up meeting Andrew—"Andrew," at a florescent-lit cake shop with plastic tables, where "Andrew" is pouring sugar after sugar into a take-away cup and reading a battered paperback of _A Passage to India_. Sherlock said to look for an electric green gilet, and there it is: electric indeed. John clears his throat and slides into the chair opposite from him, and the kid looks up from his book, a little vaguely.

"Yeah?" he asks. John wasn't consciously expecting anything, but in retrospect, maybe someone who looked more...well, more like a prostitute, like sex was the main thing on offer. He definitely wasn't expecting this guy, who is a little stocky and not quite redheaded, and looks, if anything, like a very much younger cousin of Lestrade's: an ordinary, mildly good-looking English kid who probably plays sport and drinks lager and in general resides in a completely different world from both Sherlock and hookers.

"Hi," John says. "I'm John. I'm, um, a friend of Sherlock's?"

The kid's eyes narrow, and John says hurriedly, "His flatmate, actually, and, uh, I'm trying—he broke his leg."

The kid doesn't say anything, so John says, "You are Andrew, aren't you?"

"Yeah," he says. "What of it?"

"He broke his leg," John repeats. "And he was wondering if you could...stop by."

Andrew's face clears a little. "I haven't got cab fare," he says, which Sherlock told John he would, so John says, "That's all right, it's covered," and when Andrew stands up John does too, and follows him into the street.

After John gives the address to the driver, Andrew tells him, "I should charge extra for two," and John says, "What?" and the kid raises his eyebrows and points at John, and John says, "Oh, no, I—I really am his flatmate, he really did break his leg, it's—just one," and then laughs a little, which probably makes him sound deranged, because this is what happens when you pick up hookers for your incapacitated flatmate.

John lets Andrew into the flat and then goes out for a walk, then a pint, then curry and another pint, because their walls aren't as thick as they could be and presumably there's a reason why Sherlock usually entertains his prostitutes away from home. When he comes back Sherlock's bedroom door is closed, but the flat is quiet, so he watches telly on mute for an hour or two and then goes to bed.

The next morning, Sherlock's on the sofa, cast propped up over the arm, staring up at the ceiling with his hands folded together over his chest.

"Um," John says.

"Do you really think he was in it alone?" Sherlock asks.

"What?"

"Fuller," Sherlock explains, looking over. "I didn't much think about it at the time, but he's rather old for it. Statistically, the level of technical know-how required, for a man over sixty—"

"Did you see something that makes you think he had a partner?" John settles down into his chair, leaning forward.

"No." Sherlock sighs. "If I had I wouldn't have waited a week and a half to look into it, leg or no. Oh, and I got his phone number."

John blinks. "You what?"

"Andrew," Sherlock says. "He gave me his phone number, so I won't ask you to meet him again; I'm sure that was awkward for you. His son, do you think? There was a photo on his mantle of a chap in his late twenties, long hair, chubby, ghastly cheap black trench coat. Quite promising, that—'swot' written all over him. Hand me your laptop, will you?"

John hands it over silently, and Sherlock slides up onto the pillows so he can rest John's computer on the base of his ribs.

 

Of course, this is how John's life works, these days: less than a week after Sherlock manages to track down Benjamin Fuller (who turns out to be more "unwitting accomplice" than "technical partner" to his father's illicit jaunts with other people's credit cards), Lestrade calls them at three in the morning; they've found a body (sadly common) just around the corner from their flat (unusually convenient), carefully laid out flat outside the gate of one of the smaller churches (both out of the ordinary and more than a little creepy). Sherlock grumbles as he struggles to fold up around his cast to crouch next to the dead woman, who is wearing a green cotton dress and a stab wound, and then pronounces, "Prostitute, obviously." John's skin crawls; somehow getting called in for a dead hooker within ten days of picking up a live one doesn't exactly make him feel like a pillar of moral rectitude.

After the police run her fingerprints for the ID, John spends three hours looking over her file: Elizabeth Keller, twenty-three, waitress and part-time streetwalker, when tips were bad. He wonders if she was a Lizzie or a Liz or an Eliza, if she told men her name was Crystal or Ginger, anything but Beth; he wonders how many times she wondered if she was going to die before she actually did. When they go to talk to her flatmate in the morning, Sherlock complains about each of the thirty steps up to the flat, and then quietly holds out tissue after tissue while Madeline, red-eyed and bewildered, sobs, "Betty wasn't—she wasn't even _working_ , she told me she was meeting a friend, she wore her mum's necklace and she only ever brought it out for special occasions, you know?"

"I'm so sorry," Sherlock tells her, unexpectedly gentle; it's not until the end of the visit that John realizes it's because Madeline doesn't know anything.

On the way back down, Sherlock is quiet, despite the ongoing awkwardness of navigating stairs on crutches, and then he says, "The necklace."

"She was wearing a necklace," John tells him.

"I know," Sherlock says. "A sapphire. Small, but a very nice stone, and the setting was Edwardian. Expensive. It's interesting."

John exhales slowly. "You didn't think it was a theft, did you?" he asks.

"Oh, no, the killer's obviously motivated by something else," Sherlock says. "The usual script would be some punter gets angry or overly enthusiastic, religious mania perhaps, but it seems unlikely in this case, doesn't it?"

"Really?" John asks. "I wondered about the church, especially since she was. You know."

"Her dress, though," Sherlock says. "And her shoes."

When they get home, John looks at the file again, looks at Betty Keller's pale green cotton dress, stained dull rusty brown across her belly and ribs; at her plain shoes, the slim line of the necklace disarrayed around her skinny neck. John can tell that she wasn't ever pretty, exactly, but he can tell from the two lopsided snapshots they've got from Madeline that she did have an unusually wide and sensual mouth, and John can believe that in a short enough skirt with shiny enough lip gloss, she could have made more than enough to pay her rent. The thought makes him feel a little sick; he closes the file and tries to put it out of his mind, without much success.

The police ask around at her restaurant, question her neighbors, but no one seems to know who she went out to meet, or why he might be worthy of her mum's sapphire necklace, that she only ever brought out on special occasions. Sherlock complains constantly about his leg, which is new, and makes John bring him endless cups of tea, which isn't, and refuses to take the co-codamol he is currently legitimately prescribed. John suspects him of saving it up for a special occasion.

"She's from Barnsley," Sherlock tells him on the third morning.

John looks up from his toast. "Is that important?"

"Her roommate said she was from London, but I tracked down her school records," Sherlock says, without looking up from his laptop. "Barnsley, all the way from nursery school through sixth-form college."

"So, that means," John says, and then pauses. "I have no idea what that means."

"It means that her roommate didn't know she was from Barnsley," Sherlock says, "but did know that her sapphire necklace was an important memento of her mother. Hand me my phone, will you?"

John sighs and stretches out, picks Sherlock's phone up off the table and puts it in Sherlock's hand, not quite ten inches away.

"Thank you," Sherlock says, and smiles at him, which is somewhat alarming.

"You're in a good mood," John says, leaning back.

"You're going to the surgery today, aren't you?" Sherlock asks, thumbing at his phone.

"Yeah," John says. "At ten. Need something?"

"Well, we're out of milk," Sherlock tells him, which John knows, since he's the only one who drinks it. "See you. Later."

John frowns a little. "At ten," he repeats.

"Yes," Sherlock says, and taps incessantly at his phone until John leaves, an hour and a half later.

 

Sherlock is noodling on the violin when John gets home, and he's still lying on the sofa, but the other way around. His face is calm and still, and Andrew is sitting in John's chair, tying his shoelaces.

"Hi," John tells him. "Um—how're you?"

"All right," Andrew says. "Sorry, I'll be out of your hair in a moment."

"No, no," John says, wrestling the shopping up onto the table. "It's, um. Nice to see you?"

"Right," Andrew says, and laughs a little, and John laughs, too, because really, only if Sherlock Holmes is involved does this kind of situation come up. Sherlock glares at them.

John ignores him. He doesn't think that it actually matters why Andrew's over; just because Sherlock's determined to be a bastard doesn't mean—"I picked up more biscuits, was just about to make myself a cuppa, if you'd like a—"

"Oh, no, I've got an evening—I have to go," Andrew says, standing and zipping up the electric green gilet, sliding the strap of his messenger bag over his chest. "But, um. Thank you."

"Of course." John can hear his trainers squeak halfway down the stairs, but he waits until he hears the door downstairs bang shut before asking, "How on earth did you meet him, anyway?"

"Who?" Sherlock slides the bow across the D string with a final flourish.

"Andrew," John asks. "How did you—I mean, the only time I've ever met people who had sex for money it was under the seal of physician confidentiality. I honestly can't even imagine where _you_ would find a prostitute."

"It's not rocket science," Sherlock says. "I bought him a coffee and then offered him five hundred quid to take me home and not ask for my number in the morning."

"Jesus." John swallows. "You mean—he's not—he only does this for you, then?"

"Well, it's not like I have an exclusive use contract," Sherlock says. "But I'm fairly certain I'm his only employer in that particular regard, yes."

"You actually talked a boy into having sex with you for money," John says.

"'Boy' is unfair; he's twenty," Sherlock tells him. "Besides, it seems the best way to go about it, with that type."

"Ah," John says. Twenty. Jesus. Because that makes it less twisted. Right. "And what type would that be?"

"You know." Sherlock waves the bow about vaguely. "Young enough to be open-minded, broke enough to be motivated, theoretically interested in a spot of shirt-lifting but disinclined to pursue it for fairly legitimate practical concerns. They'll usually take the money, and if they don't they're always too embarrassed to bring it up with the police."

"You've—you've actually done it before?" John sputters.

Sherlock looks up at him. "Of course I have," he says mildly, lowering the violin to his lap.

"Oh, _of course_ you have. So what, do you have an entire roster of young men who you've enticed into illicit homosexual prostitution, or—"

"John," Sherlock chides. "I don't have time for anything that could constitute a roster for any sport. Except perhaps bowling. But it doesn't matter, they really only have a year or two in them, before they move on to bigger and better, though generally less lucrative, professions. Andrew is the only person whom I currently...employ."

John exhales. "And these boys—"

" _Young men_ ," Sherlock corrects. "I'm not a pedophile. They are generally young, yes, but they're all adults, and their youth is more a result of circumstances than my sexual preferences."

"Yes," John says. "I'm sure your sexual preferences have nothing to do with it."

"Only in the most basic sense," Sherlock says absently.

"Normal gay men have hookups, you know," John tells him. "Money doesn't actually have to change hands."

"I'm not normal," Sherlock tells him. "I'm not really gay, either, though I have no doubt that you'll argue with me on that point."

John huffs out a breath. "You're not gay."

"As expected," Sherlock says, and sighs. "Saying I'm gay implies that I deliberately relate to a specific sexual identity, with an accompanying participation in a specific subculture. I do not think of myself as a gay person and I do not participate in gay culture. In fact, I find my sexual desires to be, at best, an inconvenience, like a particularly hideous boil that periodically needs lancing, and while I do prefer sex with men to sex with women, I also find men to be infinitely less bother. I run no risk of getting them pregnant, no matter how many holes they poke in their condoms, and they are in general much more willing to accept a strict cash transaction and leave me alone afterwards. Honestly, it's unfortunate that masturbation is only adequate over a limited time frame."

"That's quite possibly the most heartless thing I've ever heard in my life," John tells him.

Sherlock looks up. "You say these things like I've surprised you," he says, and then tucks the violin back under his chin.

 

The problem with the Betty Keller case is threefold: one, that girl, whose photograph still makes John's chest tense up; two, her flatmate, who still lives close enough that John sometimes sees her waiting for the Tube in the mornings, pale and half-hiding in the high collar of her coat; and three, Sherlock, who has enough trouble getting around that he's trying to reorganize his entire investigative process to be internet-based. The problem with that is that it means that Sherlock is almost entirely dependent on information provided to him by people who are unquestionably less intelligent than he is, which means that the number of times John comes home to Sherlock yelling at his laptop or into his mobile in near-apoplectic frustration is rapidly increasing towards the theoretical limit of the number of times John has come home since Sherlock broke his leg.

"When I say I want the photographs of the crime scene, I mean _all_ of the photographs of the crime scene!" Sherlock roars. "How can you be this stupid and still manage to figure out breathing!" and then flings his phone down onto the carpet, at just the right angle that it skips like a stone on water and then slides over until John stops it with his foot.

John bends and picks it up, drops it within reach of Sherlock, and then hangs up his jacket. "Bad day?" he asks, even though it's unnecessary.

"They found where she was stabbed," Sherlock sighs. "Blood all over a back alley, boring, but even after this long, there's probably something, even with all those idiots traipsing all over the evidence. Of course Lestrade's getting over 'flu and missed an entire camera when he was emailing me the photographs. He shouldn't even come in when he's taking Lemsip; he can't ever concentrate."

"So you called him stupid, just to make him feel better," John says. "Well done."

Sherlock makes a noise that closely resembles a growl, and tosses himself back on the sofa. "I can't work like this," he tells John. "I can see parts of the problem but not enough of it to make sense of the whole thing. It's useless."

"Very like a wall, very like a spear," John murmurs.

Sherlock looks over at him.

"Never mind," John says. "It doesn't matter. Have you eaten? I was thinking of calling for Thai."

 

A few nights later, John goes up to bed just after ten with a paperwork-induced headache and wakes up around three a.m.; that in and of itself isn't unusual, but he hasn't had a nightmare, hasn't jolted awake with his heart pounding, blood roaring in his ears and sweat springing up on his back and his neck despite the open window. He's simply asleep, and then he's awake, alert but not panicked. When he was younger, he'd often woken like that when Harry'd snuck back in late at night, the click of the door enough to disturb him in the nighttime silence. He doesn't hear anything now except the muted throb of the traffic outside, but he can't shake the feeling, so he slips on a t-shirt over his boxers and, after a moment, grabs his gun. He doesn't really feel like he needs it, but he'd rather carry it downstairs and feel the fool than not have it when he needs it.

He pads down the stairs as quietly as he can. The flat's dark, except for a faint glow that John places after a moment as belonging to the smallest, dimmest lamp in the living room. Not Sherlock, then. Sherlock never cares if light or sound wakes John up. So, either an untalented burglar, or—

Andrew's digging around on the sofa, looking for something, so John glances around towards Sherlock's room. Sherlock's door is pulled to but not shut all the way, and there's no light on. And that, right there, is one of John's problems with the whole Andrew situation: John has a hard time feeling like paying a university student for sex is entirely a bad thing for Sherlock, if it makes him sleep, after.

John checks the safety and then sets his gun down at the side of the bottom step of the stairs—Andrew doesn't need to know about it. Then John taps on the banister, not loud enough to wake Sherlock, he hopes, but loud enough to get Andrew's attention. Andrew looks up, back stiffening, and John waves at him, smiling a little. Honestly, the kid needn't look so terrified.

"Oh," Andrew breathes. "Hullo."

John nods, pointing at Sherlock's door, and pads over. "Lose something?" he asks, when he's close enough for Andrew to hear it with almost no breath behind it.

"Yeah, my mobile," Andrew whispers. He's wearing jeans and a rumpled t-shirt, no shoes, white socks, and the ubiquitous gilet is haphazardly draped over one arm of John's chair. "Did I wake you? Sorry."

"Don't worry about it," John tells him, and reaches down into the sofa cushions to help him look. After a moment, his fingers glance off it, and then there's a thump, shockingly loud in the silence of the flat, and both John and Andrew look towards Sherlock's door and hold their breath for a long, expectant moment.

Nothing.

Finally John pulls back and crouches down to reach under the sofa, down near the arm; he's had this happen before. "If it falls just right, it'll slide out near this end," he whispers to Andrew. "There's a tear in the underside of the upholstery, and our floor's not perfectly flat." He surfaces with Andrew's mobile in hand, holds it up in triumph. Andrew grins at him.

John hands it over. "Tea?" he asks. "Fuck, it's freezing down here."

"I—" Andrew stops. "I really didn't mean to wake you, Sherlock said you weren't well."

"Just a headache, it's gone now," John tells him. "Long day at work, too many forms."

Andrew huffs out a laugh, then whispers, "Tea'd be lovely, actually. I've still got mounds to do, when I get home."

John pads over to grab his jacket off its hook and slide it on, then into the kitchen to turn on the kettle, flipping on the light. "Why do you let him drag you out here, then?" he asks. "It's half three, can't be good for you."

Andrew frowns at him.

"I'm a doctor, you know," John explains. "I know it isn't really my business, but it's an occupational hazard; I see kids like you half killing themselves at uni and the desire to feed you vegetables and then send you to bed for a good night's sleep is almost overwhelming. Worse than being someone's mum."

Andrew snorts, and then laughs, and then puts a hand over his mouth and glances towards Sherlock's room with a worried expression.

"I think he's pretty well unconscious, if your phone didn't wake him," John tells him. "Pull up a chair. Um, and make sure there's nothing on it. No good to pull you away from your studies and expose you to toxic mold all in one night."

Andrew does, a little awkwardly. "Does he really do that?" he asks.

"Yes," John says.

"I never know if I should believe him when he says these things," Andrew explains.

"You should," John says. "It's—well. It's yet another reason why I wonder why you let him drag you down here, away from your studies and _towards_ the toxic mold samples."

Andrew huffs out a laugh, then says, apologetically, "It's—well. The money, you know."

John studies him for a minute. Andrew's shoulders are hunched, a bit, and the tips of his ears are a little pink. "You," John says, and then pauses. "I mean—Jesus. I don't want to offend you, but I'm. Concerned. Do you need the money that badly?"

Andrew rubs his thumb over his lip, then sighs. "Not exactly," he admits. "I mean, the money is—it's very good." His cheeks are flaming, now. He clears his throat. "It—I can pay for rent and groceries and all, with leftovers, most months, and it. It doesn't interfere, so much, you know? No regular shifts to fit in among exams or the like."

"So you do it for...flexible hours?" John asks, a little uncertain.

"No, I." Andrew sighs. "It, you know, it really isn't bad, you know? The first time, I—I thought, this bloke wants to do—that, and he—he's well fit, you know, and he wants to _pay me_ for it, and, what? It was like I'd stepped into a porno. I just thought, brilliant. And now, it's." He sighs. "Easy. I can't really—I mean, I play rugby, I can't just." He sighs again, then mumbles, "Sherlock won't spread it around, you know?"

John's quiet. Then he tells him, "I played rugby," and gets up to pour the tea.

"Yeah?" Andrew says. He sounds surprised, and a little pleased.

"Yeah," John replies.

"So. You know," Andrew says.

"Maybe," John says, because he thinks rugby was maybe very different back then, and then sighs, and gets down the biscuits, too. He watches Andrew eat four while the tea brews, then says, quietly, "If you ever. I mean, if you. If you need anything."

Andrew pauses, biscuit number five halfway to his mouth.

"I'm a doctor," John reminds him. "I'm not. I mean, I am a fucking _health professional_ , so I'm. Safe. Safe as the grave. You can tell me—or ask me—anything. All right?"

Andrew watches him.

"All right?" John repeats.

Andrew says, "All right."

 

That evening, they're waiting for takeaway and get Lestrade instead. John lets him in, and by the time they get upstairs, Sherlock's struggled up to sitting, his cast propped up on the coffee table.

"Well?" Sherlock demands.

"We've got a cousin," Lestrade says. "He got picked up last night for drunk and disorderly, took us a while to find him in the system. When we did, Donovan asked him to tell her about Keller and he just started to cry."

Sherlock frowns. "How old is he?" he asks.

"Twenty-two," Lestrade says. "Only just."

"Wrong," Sherlock tells him. "It's not him. Keep looking."

"Sherlock," Lestrade sighs.

"It's not him," Sherlock repeats. "Wouldn't cry. Too young. Doesn't make sense."

"Do you know how hard it is to track down _cousins_?" Lestrade asks.

"I got you their names," Sherlock says, defensively.

"Yes," Lestrade says. "All _hundred and seventeen_ of them. Oh, and thank _God_ no one on that side of her family has a common name, like, oh, I don't know, Harrison, or Brown, or Moore; otherwise we'd be up to our elbows in false matches!"

"I find your sarcasm unmoving," Sherlock tells him.

Lestrade looks very nearly homicidal, but appears to rein it in at the last possible moment.

"Probably not a first cousin, if that helps," Sherlock muses.

"Great," Lestrade sighs. "I'll just cross those eight names off the list then, shall I?"

"Well, I don't know if I'd go that far," Sherlock says. "Only if they're under thirty."

Lestrade bites off a groan and stomps back down the stairs, and John turns to Sherlock and asks, "You think she was meeting a relative?"

"I know she was meeting a relative," Sherlock says. "It's obvious."

John sighs. "I wonder if I even need to ask you to explain, or if I just make vague noises at this point, you'll fill me in anyway."

Sherlock waves a hand airily. "She wore her mother's necklace, so we know from her flatmate that it was a special occasion: someone she knew, then, and either knew well or wanted to know well. Either a close personal relationship, or a professional interview for something other than her usual evening employment, or potentially a date that she hoped would turn into a romantic attachment. I think that we can rule out a work engagement by the timing, if nothing else; not too many interviews for legitimate work at nine in the evening. Date's looking likely. But! The necklace is a sapphire and her dress was green, light green; they didn't go well even before she bled all over everything. She wasn't dressing to impress. She was wearing ballet pumps, too, not the sort of thing a woman would wear if she wanted to attract a man. So that leaves someone with whom she already has a close relationship. Moreover, nothing about her clothes was at all fancy except the necklace; the likelihood is that the necklace had an additional significance to the person she was meeting; we know that the necklace formerly belonged to her mother; conclusion: she was meeting someone who had also been close to her mother. None of her immediate family is living, but here we have an old acquaintance, close to both mother and daughter: obviously a relative."

"Not a family friend?" John asks.

"Unlikely that the necklace would have the same significance to someone outside the blood," Sherlock muses. "Family heirlooms are like that. A family friend would probably just see a smallish sapphire necklace, possibly a little bit valuable; a relative sees something that's lived with a loved one day in and day out for decades, and through that process has acquired transitive value: if I am close to their things I am close to them. My guess would be that it originally belonged to a great-grandmother, at least, with a setting that old; Lestrade's tracking down her maternal relatives and finding out who's been in town recently."

John watches him for a minute. Then he asks, "What's yours?"

Sherlock frowns. "Your heirloom," John clarifies.

"Oh," Sherlock says, and raises an eyebrow. "Do you really think I'd be that sentimental?"

"I have a pair of cufflinks that were my dad's," John tells him. "I never wear them, but I still like to have them around."

Sherlock shifts, reaches over for his phone. John sighs, a little, and picks up his book again.

"My grandmother gave me her copy of _Traité élémentaire de chimie_ when I went to uni," Sherlock says, after a minute. "It's a reprint, not a first edition or anything, and she'd written in it with a fountain pen that leaked, and I think that once she may have dropped it in the bath."

"Oh," John says. After a minute, he looks back down at his book.

"I keep it just under my bed," Sherlock says.

 

One of he most awkward moments of John's life is just after eleven in the morning the next Monday, when he rings the bell for the next patient, reaches for the next chart on the pile, and skimming it quickly, says, "Right, Mr. Reid. What can I—" and then looks up to see Andrew rapidly turning lobster red in the doorway.

"Oh," John says, and then glances back down at the chart. _Reid, Andrew Malcom, Birthdate: 18-11-1989._ "I—I'm sorry, I—I didn't realize."

Andrew shifts a little on his feet.

"Do you," John says, and then clears his throat. "Is it—if you like, I can have you see another doctor, if—"

"No," Andrew says. "It's, um—it's not anything embarrassing or anything, just. I got banged up a bit in practice yesterday and this morning my wrist's not feeling right. I had a bad sprain a few years back that started that way and didn't get sorted for months, so."

"Oh," John says. "All right, um. Let's have a look, then."

It's certainly not the first time that John's performed an examination on someone he knows. He's operated on soldiers he had chatted with every day in the mess, extracted a bullet from the upper thigh of a Marine who had tried to teach John's squad to play American football a week earlier. He'd even had to perform a very unethical and jaw-clenchingly awkward gyn exam on an intelligence specialist he'd had a very hot, highly illicit, and extremely rough sexual encounter with forty-eight hours earlier, because she was still in pain and neither of them could've afforded the fallout if anyone else had started asking questions. But he still feels self-conscious, cheeks hot, for no reason he can mark, as he presses his fingers to Andrew's forearm and palm, his puffy wrist just shadowed with bruising, as he checks the range of motion of Andrew's fingers.

"Just twisted, I think," John says, finally. "It's definitely not broken, and you can move your fingers just fine, so I'm not too worried. Are you left-handed?"

"No," Andrew says.

"Right, then, you shouldn't have any problem resting it," John says. "I can wrap it if you like, but even that's not strictly necessary unless it's bothering you. Ice and anti-inflammatories, let it heal, come back if the pain or swelling increases suddenly."

"Right," Andrew says, and smiles at him, eyes crinkling. "So I'm done?"

"Yes," John says, and then blurts out, "Your name's actually Andrew," and then immediately regrets it.

"What?" Andrew says.

"Nothing," John says. "I—that was completely inappropriate, I'm sorry. Ignore it."

"Oh." Andrew sounds uncertain, standing slowly. "All right."

 

John ends up having a week and a half straight at the surgery; he's filling in for Tim, who has to have his tonsils out (and at forty-five, too—John's throat aches in sympathy). All of Betty Keller's cousins, except for the one poor lad that Lestrade had already arrested, seem to be accounted for outside of London, and Sherlock is impossible; he texts John at four-and-a-half minute intervals, all day, every day, with increasingly wild and random theories—it was a cousin who's been planning for years, and changed his name! It was an aunt who faked her own death a decade ago!—and then, in a way that would be baffling coming from anyone else, inquiries about the mechanics of emergency field amputation.

"Look," John tells him when he gets home, "I understand that you're stuck here and you're bored, but cutting off your own leg is not going to help with your mobility in the long run."

Sherlock grimaces at him and then throws one long arm over his eyes. "I can't stand this," he says. "There's nothing to _do_. Lestrade keeps tossing me cases that he wouldn't normally even mention to me because he feels sorry for me, but none of them are worth the time it takes him to call."

"You're halfway through," John reminds him.

"So I have _another five weeks_ of this," Sherlock snaps. "I can't stand it, I don't know how you could stand it, I—"

"I couldn't stand it," John points out.

Sherlock looks up at him. Then he says, "Sorry."

"No, it's all right," John says. "It just drove me crazy more quietly. Besides, you only met me at the end bit, remember?"

"I'm sorry," Sherlock repeats.

"It's all right," John repeats. "Tea?"

"Thank you," Sherlock says, and sighs. When John comes back in with the tea and biscuits, Sherlock has struggled up to sitting.

He's not put his cast on the coffee table, but John notices that the base of his toes are red where they stick out of the cast. "Have you been scratching?" John demands.

"My foot is _on fire_ ," Sherlock snarls.

"You're only going to make it worse," John tells him.

"John," Sherlock says, in tones of unusual patience, "I can barely get around the flat, I have matching bruises in each armpit from those ghastly crutches, Lestrade is ruining my case, I have less than nothing to do, and my foot is _on fire_. Believe me when I say that scratching cannot possibly make this worse."

John clears his throat. "Andrew?" he asks.

"Essay," Sherlock grumbles, and then adds, "He won't even let me write it for him."

"Dear God," John says.

"I asked Mycroft if he had anything for me," Sherlock admits. He's flushing, a little, because apparently begging your brother for work is more embarrassing than begging your favorite prostitute to let you do his homework for him.

"And?" John asks.

"He hasn't answered," Sherlock sighs. "I think he's too busy savoring the irony."

The next day, John makes use of some of the extra pay from his fill-in for Tim to buy Sherlock seven books of extra-hard crosswords and a hairdryer. Sherlock scoffs at the crosswords, and looks puzzled at the hairdryer; John explains, "Cool setting only. It'll help with the itch."

Sherlock looks down at the hairdryer suspiciously, but when John comes down the next morning, Sherlock's sitting up and studiously filling in one of the puzzles halfway through the first book—in pen, of course—and the hairdryer is sitting on the table next to him, still plugged in.

"Better?" John asks.

"Marginally better than being shot in the head," Sherlock tells him, without looking up. "Help me with sport."

John helps him with politics, too.

 

On Thursday, John comes back to Baker Street with the shopping and has one sudden, heart-stuttering moment of terror: the front door is open wide, and when he takes the steps two at a time, shouting Sherlock's name, there's no answer but Andrew at the top, looking both terrified and confused, and trying, in a rush of words, to explain his presence to Mrs. Hudson, who is brandishing a broom at him and calling him a young delinquent and a thug while Andrew backs away from her and tries not to trip over any of the innumerable books and papers lying strewn about the floor.

"Mrs. Hudson!" John shouts, because she is apparently capable of drowning out anything less shrill, and when she turns to him, saying, "John, this _person_ —"

"He's a friend, it's _fine_ ," John tells her. "Put down the broom. What's going on? Where's Sherlock?"

They both start talking at once. Mrs. Hudson hasn't put down the broom. John raises his hands. "Please," he says. "Andrew. Is Sherlock in?"

"No," Andrew says. "He called me, but—"

"I saw him leave an hour ago," Mrs. Hudson insists. "With Sergeant Donovan. And then this—"

" _Friend_ ," John warns, brain whirring. Why would Donovan come to their flat? Without Lestrade? Lestrade must be working on something, something important, or—

"I just popped out for a moment, and then I came back and the door was standing open," Mrs. Hudson says, and then sniffs. " _Anyone at all_ could've come in," she adds, glaring at Andrew.

"It was open when I got here!" Andrew insists. "I thought, Sherlock's leg—"

"It must've been about the case," John tells them, and looks around. The books and papers don't seem to be related in any obvious way— _Medical Pharmacology at a Glance_ , _The Idiot_ , _Threatened Birds of Asia_ —but John knows better than to trust his own impressions when it comes to Sherlock's thought processes, anyway. Then he realizes that Sherlock's laptop is gone, but his own is still sitting on the table (not a robbery, then), and he sighs; he'd spotted Sherlock's computer tucked into the bookshelf on its side that morning and wondered, idly, if Sherlock had put it there on purpose, or if he'd remember where it was when he needed it; from the look of things, the answer to both those questions was "no," and Sherlock had rather had to dig for it. He pulls out his phone, texts _where are you? everything okay?_ , just in case, and then says, "I'm sorry about this, Mrs. Hudson, I'll talk to him when he gets in, but I think he just came back for his computer but couldn't find it. He's been having rather a time of it, with the crutches and everything."

She sighs, a little, and lowers the broom. "I know, poor love," she says, and clicks her tongue. "He really can't leave the door open like that, though— _anyone_ could've come in, you know, and I'm not quite as quick with a cosh as I used to be, what with my hip and all."

"Yes, thank you, Mrs. Hudson," John says, "I'll remind him," steering her gently towards the door. After she's gone, he turns to Andrew and shrugs, spreading his hands. "I'm really sorry, I reckon he forgot he'd called you."

Andrew huffs. "What a recommendation," he mumbles.

"No, it's—it's really not anything personal, he does that to me all the time," John tells him, bending down to haphazardly gather up some of the things off the floor. "It's practically a sign of affection. Can I get you a cup of tea, at least? I was just about to make up some dinner, if you want to stay; if there's been a lead, Sherlock won't eat his share, anyway."

Andrew had perked up a bit when John mentioned dinner; now he nods and says, "That'd be fantastic, actually, if you don't mind. One of my flatmates has his girlfriend visiting and I told him I'd clear off for a few hours."

"Not at all," John says. "I'll even give you a lager if you tell me you can chop onions."

"I can chop onions, as a matter of fact," Andrew tells him, and John grins and goes and digs out two lagers, from his drawer in the fridge, labeled _Food Only_ in felt tip, scrawled across a piece of worn tape. After almost ten months living with Sherlock, the lager's actually the only thing John's brave enough to keep in there on any kind of regular basis.

John makes chicken stir-fry and, for once, he doesn't burn the rice. Andrew eats almost two-thirds of it. John lets him, watching him shovel it down in mingled awe and horror; he's not at all sorry he doesn't spend every other waking second thinking about food anymore, the way he did back then, but there's still nothing quite as impressive as an adolescent boy with food and nothing else to do. "Another?" John asks, picking up their empties, and Andrew says yes, and then Andrew washes the dishes in the face of John's protests, and then they watch the match and end up polishing off the last of the contents of John's drawer in the fridge: four apiece, a nice round number. John thinks idly that Andrew's all right, and that his flatmates are really very lucky, to live with a normal bloke who can watch football and wash the dishes for a reason other than suddenly needing them to boil something unspeakable, but he's still aware that he's worried, that Sherlock still hasn't replied to his text, three hours ago, still aware that Sherlock is occasionally shockingly imprudent.

At half ten, Andrew sighs and says, "I should get back," and John says, "I'll tell him you were here," and Andrew says, "Don't bother, if he doesn't remember," and John touches his arm, just once, and says, "I didn't think to ask about your wrist."

"Oh," Andrew says, and then shrugs. "It's fine. I'm still trying to keep off it. It aches a bit when I type, but that's all."

"I'm sorry about Sherlock," John tells him, as gently as he can.

Andrew glances up at him. He says, "Me too."

 

Sherlock finally comes back in just after eleven. John hears him at the door downstairs, then the too-slow thump of his crutches as he makes his way towards the stairs, and John comes down to meet him. Sherlock's still wearing one of the pairs of black fleece pajama bottoms Mrs. Hudson picked up for him to sleep in, that first week, because they're just about the only thing that he can get into over the cast, but he's put on a suit jacket over his t-shirt, and his coat over everything. John's stomach twists, a little, and takes Sherlock's laptop and a haphazard file of papers out from where he's got them tucked in between his elbow and his left crutch, so that Sherlock doesn't have to wrestle with them and the stairs.

"Thanks," Sherlock says, voice exhausted, worn thin. His face has gone from pale to almost grey, and it takes him too long to make it up into the flat. John helps him out of his coat, but lets him struggle out of the suit jacket while John makes him toast and puts milk in his tea, even though Sherlock hates it, and brings him the co-codamol, which, for once, Sherlock accepts, his hands shaking, just a little.

"Any luck?" John asks, quiet.

"Maybe," Sherlock mumbles, leaning back on the sofa. "Tomorrow?"

"Yeah," John says, and gets him the faded blue blanket off his own bed, and turns off the lights.

Sherlock rarely sleeps through the night. The next morning John wakes up at eight to the sound of Sherlock thumping about in their tiny bathroom, cursing whenever he bumps his cast into something, and heads downstairs to find the papers and books stacked up in several piles, which is as close as Sherlock gets to tidying, and John's blue blanket folded neatly on his chair.

By the time John's made them breakfast, Sherlock's struggled back out, neat and clean and shaved. "There's water on the floor, sorry," he tells John unnecessarily, because it's actually more or less impossible for Sherlock to wash without getting water all over the floor, whether or not his leg is broken.

"Thanks," John says anyway. "Eggs in a minute."

"Brilliant," Sherlock says, and sighs.

"Want to give me an update?" John asks when he brings over their plates.

"Not much," Sherlock says, and sighs again. "I don't know how I missed it. That boy they already interviewed, Ian Moore, the cousin. Tried to off himself, overdose, confessed in his note. They pumped his stomach and brought him 'round and then they called me up and told me I made a mistake."

"You did say older," John reminds him, then takes a bite of toast.

"Oh, he didn't do it," Sherlock says, around a mouthful of eggs, then swallows. "I had to prove that to Lestrade, though I don't know why, it was laughably obvious. He couldn't even describe the weapon. But he knows who _did_ kill her, or thinks he does, anyway; it's too bad he's scrambled himself so badly; it'll be days before he can tell us anything useful."

"Yes, too bad," John says pointedly.

Sherlock rolls his eyes. "Yes, and it's also too bad that such a promising young star of Britain's Future should try to kill himself over a guilty conscience, very sad. But he didn't succeed, and whoever wanted to kill Betty Keller _did_ , so let's try to focus on that, shall we?"

John looks away. "Yeah," he says, after a minute. "What do you think he knows?"

"Very nearly everything, I'd suspect," Sherlock says thoughtfully. "I wouldn't be at all surprised if he's the relative she was meeting, and if he came with a third party. Didn't see it happen, but the murderer told him about it afterwards; a nasty trick, that. Not enough to kill the girl, but also to drive the cousin to suicide—inelegant, and cruel."

"Careful," John tells him, lips quirking. "That sounded almost human."

Sherlock reaches over and steals the last of John's toast.

 

It turns out that Ian Moore came down from Barnsley to meet his cousin and brought an old friend from secondary school, a lad named Liam Osbourne. Osbourne had told Moore he'd always rather liked Betty Keller; hadn't told Moore she'd turned him down, again and again and again. Moore had been matchmaking, poor sod. Over dinner, Keller was unusually distant and restrained, Moore's favorite auntie's necklace winking at her throat; after, Moore had ducked in to pick up something from the off-license; when he'd come out, Keller and Osbourne were gone. Osbourne came back around to the hostel three hours later and begged Moore to help him hide the body; Moore had sent him away and carried his cousin, as gently as he could, around the corner to the church, someplace safe, where they would take care of her.

Osbourne turns out to be a bad lot all around: handsome, arrogant, and all the right kinds of charming; probably a genuine psychopath; probably not the first time he's hurt someone. Donovan rises several notches in John's estimation when Osbourne tries to stick his hand under the buttons of her shirt when she's interviewing him and she breaks his hand without her expression changing one whit; no one mentions it at all, and John's pretty certain that Lestrade will take care of it without anyone needing to.

Moore spends another three days in the hospital before heading back to Barnsley. John knows Sherlock talked to him at least once on his own, but he doesn't know what Sherlock said. All he knows is that for the next few days, Sherlock's eyes keep flicking to him every minute or two when they're both in the flat, but every time John looks at him directly, he's doing something else.

 

Not long after Ian Moore heads home, John runs into Betty Keller's roommate in Tesco. The case may be cracked, but Madeline's lost weight, and her face has grown angular and desperate-looking, her wide brown eyes wider above her hollowing cheeks. Her eyes are still red-rimmed, and John helps her carry her shopping back to her flat, and then makes her tea in her own old-fashioned blue teapot. She still hasn't packed away Betty's things. The heat's not on yet and the flat's chilly, headed towards cold; she doesn't take off her sweater and sits on the sofa with her stockinged feet tucked under her while John makes the tea.

"I need to get another flatmate," she tells him, voice thick. "I need to clear out her things. I can't afford to stay on my own, but. It's just."

"Hard," John finishes, handing her her cup.

"Yeah," Madeline says, and rubs at her face with her sleeve.

"Is there anyone who can help?" John asks. "Your parents? Brothers or sisters?" He wonders momentarily why Moore didn't do it, but, no, of course he wouldn't. John can't bring himself to expect him to.

Madeline gives a wet, raw little laugh. "My brother goes to uni in the States," she says. "My parents died ages ago. It's—Betty and me, we were both. There wasn't anyone else around, really, for us."

John swallows. "I could help," he says. "I'm not—I haven't anything on right now, if you'd like."

Madeline's eyes fill, and John stays quiet, but passes her the tissues. Madeline drinks her tea and wipes at her eyes in silence, and then she whispers, "You don't mind?"

John remembers packing up his parents' house, on holiday from uni his second year. His mum had died when he was fourteen, and until that holiday he hadn't really thought about how his dad hadn't ever cleared out her things. He'd been a military man himself, so the house was always pristine, hoovered and dusted within an inch of its life, but his mum's perfume and face cream were still sitting on their bathroom counter, her clothes still folded in the bureau, with lemon soap in boxes tucked in at the corners to keep them fresh. It'd all been left after his father died, so that John had had to pack up both their things together: his mum's wool coat, too small for Harry, and his father's ancient boots, too big for him; box after box for charity, so little they could keep. But Harry had been with him, and they had worked together in silence, took hourly breaks for tea, and John had looked up, every now and again, to see her: bent over, jaw squared, her mouth stony and her dishwater hair escaping from her bun—a reflection, just altered, of himself.

"I don't mind," he says.

He has to go back by Tesco to pick up the shopping he'd neglected in favor of Madeline, but he's not really paying attention, and when he unpacks the bags at home, he finds an extra box of biscuits, even though they're not out; a mysterious jar of bread-and-butter pickles, which he hates; and no milk. He goes downstairs and trades Mrs. Hudson the pickles for a cup and a half of milk in a jar, which'll hold them over long enough to save him another trip out; the wind's up, and it smells like they're in for rain.

"I'm going to be out tomorrow," John tells Sherlock. Sherlock looks up. John explains, "I'm helping Madeline pack up Betty Keller's things, she's not really in any state to do it herself."

Sherlock sits up a little straighter. "Can I help?" he asks.

"What about your leg?" John says.

Sherlock waves a hand. "I can sit and you can bring me things and I can sort them," he says.

"You just want to look through her things," John says.

"Well, obviously," Sherlock says.

 

Sherlock does end up coming, sitting on the edge of Betty's bed after John has stripped it and neatly, if somewhat slowly, packing her things into the three boxes spread out in front of him, two on one side of the cast and one on the other. Madeline can't stand to do much at all; she generally lasts about ten minutes at a time before she has to excuse herself rather damply and recover in the kitchen. John doesn't feel anything but sorry for her, and Sherlock's more than happy to have her out of his way so he can snoop with impunity.

"Do you think they were lovers?" Sherlock asks, after the fourth time Madeline sniffles out of the room.

"What?" John asks, glancing over at him.

"Madeline and the dead girl," Sherlock says, thumbing through a battered paperback with a blacked-out library tag on the spine.

"What?" John asks. "Oh—God, no, I—no." He wonders if he should've, if his original recasting of his own personal drama could be so far off.

Sherlock sighs.

"Why, do you?" John asks, a little awkwardly.

"I often can't tell with women, unless I see them together," Sherlock says, and sighs again. "There aren't any clear signs that they _were_ lovers, but with flatmates that rarely means much. Neither of them has a regular boyfriend."

"They were both orphans," John reminds him. "No family." Sherlock looks at him. "Women often form sibling-like bonds with close friends," John clarifies.

"Hm," Sherlock says. "They also often have quasi-sexual relationships with close friends."

"I try not to think about that," John admits.

"Why not?" Sherlock asks, dropping the paperback into the box.

"Well, it's considered rather bad form to think about your lady friends shagging one another," John tells him.

Sherlock's mouth quirks. "I don't think my mother ever mentioned that one."

John snorts, and hands him a photo album. "Madeline probably would like to keep that," he says, "so put it aside when you're done with it."

It takes the better part of a day to pack up Betty's things, and at lunchtime John successfully recruits Mrs. Mitchell, the landlady—"Call me Deborah, love, I'm not so much older than you, you know"—to take the things for charity away. At teatime she comes up with sandwiches and ends up staying for over an hour, one plump, comfortable arm around Madeline, who is still dripping, silently, while John hoovers Betty's room and Sherlock drinks all the tea. John's pleased to leave Madeline in Deborah's care; Deborah's already scolding Madeline to eat something and Madeline's started to nibble at a sandwich in reply, so John thinks she's probably in good hands. John walks down the stairs slowly, behind Sherlock, and holds the door for him at the ground floor, which turns out to be a miscalculation; Sherlock very nearly falls in the street trying to hail a cab, rather than waiting for John to come and do it for him.

Back at the flat, Sherlock heads straight for the sofa. He seems paler than usual, even if it's not half as bad as it was the day Ian Moore tried to kill himself, and as Sherlock settles down he exhales, long and slow. John doesn't bother asking. He brings Sherlock toast and a glass of water and, splitting the difference, two paracetamol, which Sherlock examines minutely before finally accepting, while he waits for the kettle to warm up.

"Are you going to take her out?" Sherlock asks, and then takes a bite of toast.

"What?" John asks.

"Madeline," Sherlock says.

John stares at him. "You— _what_?"

"You helped her clean out her flat," Sherlock points out.

"Not to get a leg over!" John protests. "Jesus. I—I feel sorry for her, she's lost someone important to her."

"You seemed surprised when I asked if you thought they were lovers," Sherlock says. "It's a natural line of inquiry; I'm surprised it hadn't occurred to you. I wondered if you had an interest that had blinded you to the possibility that she had sex with women."

John crosses his arms. "I was thinking about my sister, actually," he says.

Sherlock's brow wrinkles fractionally. "Your sister has sex with women."

"No!" John says. "I mean— _yes_ , but I meant, I was thinking about my sister and me, cleaning out my parents' house after my dad died. Not. Not her. Bedroom habits."

"Oh," Sherlock says. "That's an uncomfortable subject for you, is it?"

"Do you want to think about Mycroft getting off?" John asks.

"All right, that's enough of that," Sherlock says.

John spreads his hands.

"You're not going to take her out, then?" Sherlock asks.

"She's grieving," John says. "She's also—what, twenty-two? Twenty-three? She's very, very young."

"But she's attractive," Sherlock says.

"And also very, very young," John repeats. Madeline is a pretty girl, he supposes, but she's closer to the hard-eyed, terrified secondary school girls who come in for STD and pregnancy testing, who invariably make him feel old and useless, than she is to him.

"I have been given to understand that for most men, that's a recommendation," Sherlock says.

"What is that?" John asks. "You have been 'given to understand', why can't you just say you hear that a lot of thirty-nine-year-old perverts like young girls—which, ta ever so for the vote of confidence—"

"Are you a pervert?" Sherlock asks, straightening.

"What?" John asks. "No!"

"Oh," Sherlock says, slouching back down. "Pity; I'm always interested to talk to one; it broadens one's horizons."

"Your horizons are broad enough already, I think," John says grimly.

"I don't know," Sherlock says. He sounds oddly discontented. "There's still an awful lot I haven't done."

John's cheeks heat up, but the kettle chooses to click just then, so at least he has a distraction. He wonders, still, just what all Sherlock has done, exactly what Sherlock does; it's not that he thinks about it on purpose, but—Sherlock! Who keeps body parts in the fridge and his secondary chemical apparatus in the bath! Until that day back in April when Sherlock had come home and wolfed down eggs and toast with his mouth and chin rubbed raw and pink, John hadn't even thought he _had_ a sex life, at least not one involving other people; now John knows he recruits his own hookers and prefers men but doesn't think of himself as gay. It's like every little scrap of information comes with fifteen bizarre new questions, like he's nine years old again and looking at the diagrams in his sister's biology textbook and asking, in bafflement and wonder, _but...how does it_ work _?_

When he hands Sherlock his tea, he takes a risk and says, as casually as he can manage, "So, sex with women."

"Wet," Sherlock tells him.

"So you've had sex with women," John elaborates.

"Yes," Sherlock says. "It was wet."

"Did you pay them?" John asks.

"Hm," Sherlock says. "I paid for the cab; does that count?"

"No," John says. "That's just the gentlemanly thing to do."

Sherlock looks up at him. "The gentlemanly thing to do is to pay for the cab before fucking a woman over the back of her sofa?"

"Well," John says. "It's more gentlemanly than _not_ paying for the cab."

"Fascinating," Sherlock says, then sighs. "I've had sex with five women. That's really what you're getting at, isn't it?"

John shifts, because, yes, that maybe is what he's getting at. "Did you like it?" he asks.

"It was interesting," Sherlock tells him. "And wet."

"I'm just trying to figure out—well, I know you don't think of yourself as being gay, but." John scratches his head. "I'm curious about just how gay—well." He stops, flushing a little.

"You," Sherlock says, "are bisexual."

John blinks at him.

"You date women, but since you are also attracted to men, by the logic of this conversation, I should still be able to determine _just how bisexual_ you are," Sherlock says.

"Hey," John says, because wondering what, exactly, makes Sherlock say John is attracted to men is probably futile. "I'm not—never in my life have I been bisexual."

"But you're attracted to men," Sherlock says.

"Well...yes," John says slowly. "I mean, if nothing else, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a medical professional who really believes that anyone is one hundred percent straight. At least not one of my generation. But I'm far more attracted to women—I mean, probably something close to ninety-five percent of the people I'm attracted to are women. My attraction to women is dominant; it's very misleading to say I'm bisexual."

"But you are attracted to men," Sherlock persists. "If we're determining sexual orientation simply by virtue of the people we're attracted to, then you are, by definition, bisexual. You are attracted to both men and women. You are a bisexual man."

"I don't have sex with men," John points out.

Sherlock raises an eyebrow.

"I _don't_ ," John says, laughing a little. "I haven't—it hasn't even come up since I was at university; I don't, at present, have sex with men."

"At present, you don't have sex with anybody," Sherlock tells him. "Besides, what's the time frame under consideration? In your world, I am a gay man; well, fine. Will I stop being a gay man if I go for a month without having sex with a man? Two months? Does it make me _less gay_ if it's been less than a year since I had sex with a woman?"

"This conversation is idiotic," John tells him.

"Yes," Sherlock says. "It is, isn't it?"

"Okay," John says, and sighs. "Fine. Sorry."

Sherlock smirks at him. "I enjoyed going down on them," he concedes, "but I've never really understood the appeal of breasts, and the noises two of them made were frankly disturbing. Kissing is _far_ more compelling with men."

Beard burn, supplies John's brain. "There," he says outloud. "Was that so hard?"

Sherlock snorts, then leans back. "Are you going to make yourself more tea?" he asks. "Because I would very much like some, if you're up."

John makes him more tea.

 

Lestrade, John knows, doesn't have anything worth giving to Sherlock; he knows this because on Friday, Lestrade texts him: _bloody hell, watson, call him off, unless he wants to help us with paperwork_.

 _I wouldn't rule that out_ , John replies.

 _actually not going to let him help us with paperwork_ , Lestrade admits, so instead, John throws the second crossword book at Sherlock's head, repeatedly, and hides his mobile, also repeatedly, until Sherlock agrees, face stormy, to work on the crosswords instead of harassing the police force. Of course, the crosswords turn out to not be quite distraction enough, and over the next week, John comes home to Andrew in their living room on Monday, runs into him leaving on Tuesday, and lets him in on Thursday, because Sherlock is in the bath.

"Um," Andrew says, flushing, when John tells him.

"C'mon, it's all right, just made tea," John tells him, leading him upstairs and handing one cup over. "How're your studies?"

"All right," Andrew says, and then sighs. "My literature under Charles I and Cromwell module is still kicking my arse, though; I haven't got the memory for the dates."

"Is that like history?" John asks.

Andrew's mouth quirks. "Sort of, yeah."

"Just remember, Willie, Willie, Harry, Stee," John intones, and Andrew laughs.

"Ah, excellent," Sherlock says, clunking in. His hair is sticking up every which way and John knows, now, from experience, that it'll be a thousandfold worse in an hour. "John let you in."

"And, I'm off," John says.

"Oh?" Andrew asks. He's not looking at Sherlock, but Sherlock is watching at him, intently.

"Sarah's hosting a bit of work get-together," John explains, grabbing his jacket. "I'll be late. Oh, and if you can't remember just put down 1066, that's when everything important happened anyway, right?"

"Right-oh," Andrew replies, grinning.

John's got the door open before he realizes, leans back in, "Oh," he says. "And, um. Happy birthday, right?"

Andrew's ears turn pink, but he nods, and why the hell should John care if Sherlock's looking at him like he's something to be dissected, just because John remembers something that Sherlock never would?

 

In the morning, John's very hungover, and Sherlock's practically chipper, despite the fact that when asked, he says, breezily, that he kicked Andrew out at half two, like it hadn't been down near freezing, like Andrew really would've charged him extra for the opportunity for a full night's sleep. John doesn't think of himself as an inherently combative person, but that's really about all the motivation he needs.

"At what point should we discuss the exploitative nature of paying people for sex?" John asks, glaring at Sherlock ineffectively while Sherlock tunes up the violin.

"Hmm," Sherlock says. "Never? How's never for you? Never's perfect for me."

"Sherlock," John sighs, rubbing at the really very possibly fatal stabbing pain above his right eye.

"I beg your pardon, but I'm not exploiting anyone," Sherlock tells him, lowering the violin. "Andrew and I have a straightforward and mutually beneficial employment arrangement in which services are exchanged for financial compensation."

"The services rendered are sexual," John points out.

"Yes," Sherlock drawls. "Well done, John. I just don't see how that is in any way relevant to the discussion. If he was cleaning the flat, you wouldn't have any problem with it, would you?"

"Actually, I'd quite like it if you'd pay someone to clean the flat," John tells him. "But you're not. You're paying him to have sex with you."

"Yes," Sherlock agrees. "And how is that exploitative, exactly? I pay him very well, quite a bit more than he could make doing anything else, given that he's not a terribly gifted musician and he hasn't finished university yet, and—"

"I really don't need to know the details," John tells him.

Sherlock ignores him. "—he's not unwilling," he says. "I wash regularly, I'm physically not unattractive, and I don't ask him to do anything weird, or dangerous, or even particularly unusual—"

"By which I mean, please don't go into details," John sighs.

"I don't want to!" Sherlock snaps. "I just really can't see how this could possibly be considered an exploitative relationship! Would you prefer it if I told him he was a special and beautiful treasure and I wanted to make passionate love to him while staring deep into his eyes, and then _didn't_ pay him? I was under the impression that you generally frowned upon getting something you want under false pretenses."

"I do!" John sighs and rubs his face. "I just, Sherlock, prostitutes in general are at higher risk of everything from depression to—"

"Andrew isn't a prostitute," Sherlock tells him.

"Well considering that you _pay him for sex_ —"

Sherlock waves a hand. "And all animals with spots are giraffes," he says cuttingly. "He's a university student with an unusually well-paying part-time job. Anyway, I don't know why I bother, the terminology is irrelevant; I'd be happy to refer to him as my masturbatory toy if it'd make you feel more comfortable.

"Christ, Sherlock, he's a person," John tells him. "Do you even realize that? Do you even—"

"Oh, please," Sherlock scoffs, putting aside the violin and struggling up from the couch. "University students aren't people. If you want to get the wind up, find a cause that's actually worth your time."

John exhales. "Excellent," he mutters, as Sherlock limps into his room, and shuts, but pointedly doesn't slam, his door.

 

John doesn't entirely know why it makes him so angry, but it does. Some days, in fact, it makes him furious. When John was Andrew's age, he'd had a dreadful part-time job mopping up in a third-rate restaurant that just barely kept him in musty-tasting tea and pot-noodle; he'd had an on-again, off-again girlfriend with brown hair and a temper; he'd played rugby just well enough to have a good time and not any better.

He knows that his university experience seems much more normal on paper than it was in person, that he'd lost his virginity to one of the rugby lads week four and had his first fistfight with a seminar leader two months in; that he'd known all along he wanted to join the RAMC in an era when military service was unfashionable; that the girlfriend had ultimately left him, two months after graduation, to spend a brief, tempestuous autumn shagging his sister. But it all still fell within some range that John understands as a typical university experience. He hates that he knows that Andrew isn't out, in any way, to anyone who might care; he hates that he has to wonder if before Sherlock Andrew was a virgin; he hates that Andrew must be, by student standards, very nearly wealthy, and keeps coming around anyway. He absolutely can't stand that Andrew might actually enjoy it, even though he knows it'd be beyond horrific if Andrew didn't.

He likes Andrew. Andrew seems _normal_. Andrew should be doing normal university things, like figuring out that he likes girls who can swallow a whole pint in one go or boys who talk too fast about existentialism, not spending his birthday getting paid to shag some mad bastard fifteen years older than him who can't be arsed to let the kid crash out for six hours in a bed he hardly uses. John can't believe that's Andrew's best option. He can't believe it's anyone's best option. He spends more time than he ought worrying what Andrew's going to be like in ten years if this is what he's doing at university. He tries not to wonder what _Sherlock_ was doing at university, even if it might be enlightening; he's having a harder and harder time believing that Sherlock is worth that much of his time.

 

The worst bit is that on the 22nd, Prema comes back from maternity leave and they're back at full staff again. Sarah tells him she'll call him as soon as she can, or if she hears about another surgery needing locum staff, but John knows that the worst part, for him, has always been waiting, uncertain, unsure if or when things will improve. He hopes there'll be something closer to Christmas, but he knows better than to count on it; everyone has seemed stretched a bit too thin this year to be taking long holidays. To add to the general misery overhanging 221B, Andrew is suddenly suspiciously absent, and it takes until Saturday for John to maneuver Sherlock, not very subtly, into revealing that Andrew has a cold. John grinds his teeth and tries not to think about the health effects of long-term lack of sleep and more than one chilly late-night cab home; he takes a walk just to get a break and ends up spending the rest of the day watching telly at Harry's. She's having a minibreak with a redhead with bleached teeth that she met on the internet, had asked him to check on the place, anyway.

On Monday, Mycroft comes by to ask Sherlock to look into something for him; it's technical enough that John only really understands about eighty per cent of the explanation, but it's enough for him to tell that it's nothing that Mycroft couldn't have some ordinary peon with an internet connection do for him, but Sherlock just says, "Really, Mycroft," then spends the better part of a week and a half alternately fiddling with the violin, often while John's trying to sleep, or staring intently at his screen. For once, Sherlock lives up to what he said that day at Bart's and doesn't talk for days on end. It's lovely.

John had been planning on spending his days out as much as he could, at the library, or in the park, or watching telly downstairs with Mrs. Hudson; instead, he's usually back in the flat by lunchtime. John's never been great at staying angry, and it's harder yet when Sherlock's being so unobtrusive (for Sherlock). John finds himself going back to always making two cups of tea and leaving Sherlock half-sandwiches in the fridge whenever he's making himself one; every now and again Sherlock eats them, which is as much confirmation as John needed that the case isn't much of a case at all. John supposes it must be better than nothing. Thursday evening, Sherlock exhales, loud and slow, while John's making too much stir-fry; John feels his mouth quirk up, then pulls down another plate. This, he remembers; this, he knows, works.

When he brings in the food, Sherlock's intent on his phone, but he pushes his laptop to the side to make room for his plate on the coffee table, and says, without looking up, "You are a god among men, John," when John sets it down.

"All sorted, then?" John asks, pulling his chair up and settling down.

"Wasn't much there to start with," Sherlock admits. "Tedious, mostly; the sort of thing where it'd be easy to make mistakes if you weren't good with details, or you didn't speak German."

"Naturally," John mouths awkwardly, around a too-hot bite.

Sherlock's eyes crinkle up. "Andrew's feeling better," he says.

John chews and swallows. "Oh," he says, "is he, um—"

"No, no, not tonight," Sherlock says. "I just. You seemed worried, before, so I thought you'd like to know. Ever the medical man."

John chews and swallows. "Yes," he says.

 

On Tuesday—at last!—the cast comes off. John goes with him to the surgery, because he knows that Sherlock's not going to be able to just jump right back into leaping over roof tops, et cetera, and he's warned Sherlock, but knows that Sherlock ignores most of what John says unless it suits him to pay attention.

Sherlock blinks when he steps down, and his breath comes up short.

"Just take it easy," John reminds him. "You haven't put weight on that leg in two months. Don't push it."

Sherlock glares at him, but he does move carefully as they're leaving. John walks beside him, trying not to be obvious how closely he's tracking Sherlock's steps, his hands tucked lightly in his pockets like he isn't half expecting to need to grab him at a moment's notice. Sherlock, though, being Sherlock, does fine, better than fine; by the time they're back at Baker Street, his gait is pretty close to normal, even if he's walking more slowly than John's ever seen him walk before, barring the crutches.

"It feels like I have pins in my heel," Sherlock says. He sounds intrigued. John knows Sherlock well enough to guess that it's not a mere idle simile: Sherlock probably knows exactly what it feels like to put pins in his heel. "I wasn't expecting that."

"The stretches will help," John tells him.

Sherlock scoffs, but John's not surprised to come down the next morning to find Sherlock diligently stretching his calf, his ankle, the muscles in his foot; Sherlock's nothing if not a scientist. He knows too well how the human body is put together to not be interested in the mechanical processes of its recovery.

 

John's at Tesco on Sunday when Sherlock texts him: _Case. Only moderately uninteresting. Back tomorrow. SH_. John finishes paying for the shopping and walks back to the flat and finds himself grinding his teeth; he'd thought they were past this part, where Sherlock breezily went about throwing himself into mortal danger with no warning to John, when John and John's gun are so often the only thing keeping Sherlock from a messy and violent death. John slams the rest of the perishables into the fridge and yanks his phone back out.

 _where are you? for god's sake, sherlock, if you get yourself killed..._

John paces until his phone pings: _Not dangerous. Home tomorrow. SH_. John presses his fingers to the bridge of his nose, and his phone pings again: _Took your gun just in case. SH_.

Sherlock gets home just after sunset the next day. John hasn't slept. Sarah had called him just as the sky was lightening from black to grey to fill in for a few days, possibly a week; Patricia is home with her youngest, who's down with chicken pox. John had been grateful for the distraction, but he knows he wasn't at his finest with his patients today—Sherlock had stopped answering his texts just after two in the morning.

"That's the line," John tells him, holding his hand out. Sherlock hands him the gun. "If you ever do that again—"

Sherlock scoffs. "I didn't even have to fire it, John. You're overreacting."

John slams the gun down on the table. Sherlock blinks at him.

"Not about the gun," John tells him, his voice tight. "This, this is. Not at all good. This is why people find you difficult and off-putting, because you can't understand that ordinary everyday sorts of people _care_ when the people they're close to dash off to possibly get themselves murdered while they're sitting up all night wondering where they are, what particular ditch their body will be found in, if they could've stopped it if they had been there. This is it. This is why you don't have friends, isn't it? Because they might care about you and it might be inconvenient?"

Sherlock's mouth tightens. "No," he says, his voice hard. "That's really more why I don't have a pet."

John feels it like a blow to the chest. He stares up at Sherlock, and Sherlock stares back, eyes glittering, mouth thinned to a line. John exhales, and shakes his head, and walks out.

He doesn't know where he's going. There really isn't any place for him to go anymore; Sarah's patience for him sleeping on her sofa evaporated roughly around the same time that she stopped returning his calls when he rang her up in the middle of the night after a case, adrenaline pumping, desperate to touch her; they've made it back to colleagues, possibly even friends, but she's decided not to have any of the rest of it and John can't entirely blame her. He can't understand how he's made it this far, how he could spend ten—almost eleven—months living with Sherlock and still have any illusions left at all, not when Sherlock is so desperate to prove to him that they are just illusions, desperate to remind him that any time John thinks he sees something like a person in him it's the merest coincidence. John doesn't understand how he could possibly be so thick, how he could almost get shot and blown up and set on fire and choked to death and have Sherlock seemingly sail through untouched, most of the time, and think that any of the rest of it mattered, because that's it, isn't it? Sherlock lies and cheats and emotionally manipulates and pays people for sex, and somehow through all of it John managed to think that he might actually be different, that Sherlock might actually have some small capacity for friendship, and choose to spend it on him. But Sherlock doesn't. And he won't.

Somehow John's ended up back in the cake shop with the florescent lighting and the plastic tables, sipping at a cup of coffee that was getting cold an hour ago, when Andrew comes in, messenger bag strapped across his electric green gilet, his hair flat on one side like he's been sleeping on it and his cheeks pink with the cold. His forehead wrinkles when he sees John, but he orders his coffee and a Danish pastry and comes and sits across from John like they're regular friends.

"Hi," John says, as Andrew slides off his bag. "I—how are you?"

"All right." Andrew reaches for the sugar. "Exams, you know. You?"

"All right," John says. "Sherlock's back on his feet."

"Oh?" Andrew doesn't seem surprised or even particularly interested, just stirs sugar into his coffee and then takes a bite of his Danish. "That's good."

"Do you like him?" John asks, and Andrew looks up, startled. "I mean. I—"

"Yeah, I guess," Andrew says, slowly. "I like—spending time with him all right, if that's what you mean."

"No, that's—sometimes I'm not sure I like him," John tells him.

"Have you two got a thing going on?" Andrew asks.

"No," John says.

"Because—well, I mean, I'm not really, I don't think I'm okay with coming around, if—"

"No," John repeats. "I'm just—Jesus, I'm _worried_ about you."

"I'm all right," Andrew says.

"Because—he's not, you know, he's not like other people, he's—"

"I'm all right," Andrew repeats, and smiles at him. His eyes crinkle a little, at the corners, and John says,

"You're so _young_ ," because he is, he's horribly young, and John has seen more than his fair share of young men who think they're invincible and never are.

Andrew takes another bite of his Danish and chews slowly, eyeing John.

"You must think I'm psychotic," John mumbles, and rubs at his face. "It's just. I don't think he has any sense that he's doing something that reaches past his—" he drops his voice— "any sense that there's not any way for most of us to just—to just turn it off, to be just—to have a relationship within his sorts of lines, that—he hasn't got any idea that people are messy and you might, you might get hurt and not be able to tell him, or have him understand—"

Andrew reaches out and tosses the last third of his Danish into the bin and stands up, reaching down for his bag. "You want to get out of here?" he asks.

John blinks. "What?"

"You want to get out of here?" Andrew repeats. "My place is just around the corner."

John stares at him, and when the words finally sink in, he can feel his blood creeping up, his cheeks heating up, burning up. He manages to gasp out, "I wasn't trying to pick you up."

Andrew grins, a little lopsided. "I know," he says. "So I thought I'd pick you up instead."

"I—Jesus," John manages. "I'm not—I'm not like him, I couldn't do that, I—"

"I _know_ ," Andrew says, "Not a paid engagement, just," then reaches out and tugs at the zip of John's jacket, just a little, and for some reason John stumbles to his feet, off-balance. "C'mon, then," Andrew says, and jerks his head towards the door, and John is halfway down the street behind him before he realizes he left his coffee on the table. While Andrew is unlocking his door, John stands behind him because there's really nowhere else to stand; he's close enough to feel Andrew's body heat, but not touching, and inside the door Andrew tugs him up against the gilet and presses a kiss to the corner of John's mouth as he throws the deadbolt behind him. John exhales and turns to meet him, and Andrew lets John open his mouth, lets John slide down the zip on the vest and slide it over his arms, then pulls back long enough to say, "I've got two flatmates, my room, c'mon."

John's thoughts have faded to a strange, white hot buzz, and he follows Andrew back into a dark, messy, university-boy bedroom with an unmade single bed and toes off his shoes as Andrew drops his bag next to the desk. Andrew pulls John down on top of him, John's knee sliding awkwardly against his blue sheets, and then he moves his mouth to John's neck so John starts working on his flies and then suddenly Andrew's got his broad hands down the back of John's pants and John's shirt is rucked up around his ribs and Andrew's tongue in his mouth and John gasps, sharp and painful, and presses down against him. Andrew moans, his voice cracking, and John kisses him harder, and slides against him, warm and slick, and tries to find his breath. Andrew slides his hands lower, pulls John's thighs apart, just a little, and John's throat closes up and he's coming, coming, coming, as Andrew arches up against him and bites down, a little too hard, on the center of John's lower lip.

John swallows, blinking hard, and when Andrew's voice catches in his throat John bats his hands away and slides down off the edge of the bed, landing on his knees with his jeans and boxers still knotted around his calves. Andrew tugs on his hair, then cups the back of his head when John presses his face against Andrew's hip, and starts to jerk him, probably slower than he wants. Andrew just groans, though, soft but heartfelt, and John works him faster, rubs his thumb over the head of Andrew's cock, and then, unable to think with the blood roaring in his ears, just desperate, draws him into his mouth. Andrew gasps, "oh— _fuck_ —" and pushes up against the pressure of John's hands on his hips, and John's cheeks burn but he doesn't pull back, not even a little bit, not at all.

John stays with his face pressed to the sticky-salty skin of Andrew's groin, trying to catch his breath, until his knees start complaining and the reality of whole thing crashes back into him. He tears a laugh out of his lungs that doesn't sound right at all, then pulls back, manages to straighten up, wincing, and tugs his shirt down and his jeans and boxers up. Andrew's propped himself up on his elbows, but he hasn't done a thing about the mess, and his eyes are dark and soft-looking in a way that John shouldn't notice, and he's twenty-one years old.

"I could be your dad," John tells him, and laughs, again, but it still sounds weird and wrong and awful.

"You're not, though," Andrew tells him. "Don't see why the rest of it matters." He yawns and sits up, pulls off his shirt and wipes at his belly, then throws it on the floor and tugs up his boxers. He looks up at John again, and asks, "Staying?"

"I really shouldn't," John tells him.

Andrew has freckles on his shoulders, skimming down onto his chest; he's got some muscle mass but he's a little pudgy, too, about his arms and his belly. He has soft reddish-blond hairs on his breastbone, more than John did at that age, and he's still wearing his socks, which are white, and one of which is longer than the other.

Andrew says, "Do it anyway."

"I can't," John says. His voice sounds strange to him, thin and weirdly twisted up. "I have to—I just—"

Andrew watches him, and then says, "Take off your shirt," his voice low and strangely heavy, irresistible.

John swallows. Then he takes off his shirt.

Then he takes another step, and another, and then Andrew slides his thumbs into John's open waistband and pulls, slowly, and John whispers, "I can't, not—" and Andrew kisses his stomach, just below his bellybutton, and John slides his fingers into Andrew's hair and whispers, "I can't, again, tonight."

He's not wrong. In the morning, though, he can.

 

John spends the rest of the week feeling, more than anything, like he has a concussion. He spends the whole of the first day feeling a little sick to his stomach, hunched over his borrowed desk at the surgery. When Sherlock texts him, _I regret my behavior. SH_ , John can't be bothered to reply, and as soon as he's finished with his last patient, he goes to Andrew's flat to find him, to tell him, to set the line in stone and hold it, and somehow ends up crouched again next to Andrew's single bed, watching his three fingers twisting into Andrew's body with his teeth in the curve of Andrew's left arsecheek and Andrew choking off low, rough noises into the mattress. John fucks him without a condom and probably without quite enough lube, his foot slipping awkwardly on the flat's semi-industrial carpeting, too smooth, and he can hear his brain screaming, screaming, screaming, but Andrew had said " _Now_ " so John had done it _now_ and anyway, John's brain is somewhere very far away and Andrew's body is solid and hot and here, _now_ , sweat-slick and burning up everywhere they're touching.

By that point John just can't see any point in resisting the ideas he's having, medically speaking, so he spends just over half an hour half-suffocated by his face pressed into his discarded clothing while Andrew licks into him, making small, helpless noises against his arse, as John's body tries desperately to prove to him that he's not almost forty. Then Andrew asks him if he can and John says yes, without even realizing that Andrew hasn't finished the question. Andrew fucks him twice; it's better the second time. John's skin tingles with near-constant static shocks and his head feels heavy and foreign, and then he says to Andrew, "You can—when can you, I want—" and Andrew spends the time while they're waiting with two fingers pressed into him, and Jesus, it's been ages, it's been so fucking long; the last time Laurel had come around her cinnamony skin had been glossy with summer before John had even touched her, and John had had to fuck her with all the windows open or they both would've finished with heatstroke, and now John's skin had prickled with goosebumps when Andrew had paused, in between, to get a glass of water. Finally Andrew bends down and sucks at John's cock, really not much better than half-hard, until John, startled, gasps out, " _Fuck_ —I—" and jerks in his mouth. Andrew moans and swallows, his eyes pressed tight shut in dark crescents, soft brown eyelashes smudging the edges, and then he whispers, "Stay, John— _please_ " and John is screwed, he's so fucking screwed, he hasn't the faintest fucking idea what he should do. So he stays.

He has to go home early in the morning to shower and change—three days at the surgery in the same clothes would be pushing things—and Sherlock is, thank God, not on the sofa when he gets in, but he's tuning his violin, neatly dressed for work, when John comes back down with the back of his neck still damp.

"Who?" Sherlock asks idly, and John feels his face heat up, against his will, and Sherlock says, "It's someone I know, obviously, so I'm going to find out sooner or later," which is true, so John exhales and tells him, "Andrew."

Sherlock's head jerks up. John's too disgusted with himself to be pleased that he's finally surprised him.

"It was a mistake," John tells him. "It won't happen again."

John wonders if Sherlock believes him. He tries to believe himself. He comes straight home, that night, and when he leaves the next morning Andrew's sitting on the step with his face pressed against his hands.

"Couldn't ring the bell," Andrew mumbles. "Don't even know your phone number."

John reaches down and pulls him to his feet. "Jesus, you're freezing," John says, and bundles him into a cab and takes him back to his flat, and Andrew paces around his living room and tells him, "I don't—I know that you shouldn't, but I—" and his voice cracks on practically every other word, and John texts Sarah, _can anyone cover for me? emergency._

 _sherlock?_ she texts back.

" _John_ ," Andrew says, and reaches for him, and John fists one hand in his t-shirt and replies, _yes_ , with the other, and he knows it's not anything like the last lie that this is going to take. John puts him to bed to warm up and goes with him, and when Andrew goes to shower before his afternoon lecture, John steals Andrew's mobile and programs in his number.

It would be bad enough if it was just Andrew, with his scrubby red-gold curls and the softness of youth that he's still outgrowing, because every word for what John is for petting his fingers over the soft furry backs of Andrew's thighs while he takes him as deep as he can and Andrew moans around him, trying and failing to keep up, every single fucking word, John's thought of calling Sherlock at some point in the past three months. John just can't seem to make his brain work in any of the ways it ought to, can't find it in himself to turn down what Andrew so obviously and desperately wants, what Andrew seems willing, without bounds, to give him.

But because John's not a very good person, in a lot of ways, it isn't just Andrew, which is worse. It's like having sex with a man for the first time since his rugby days has opened up some long-rusted floodgate at the base of John's brain, and suddenly, the gay sex that John hasn't been having is everywhere, all day every day: the barman down at his local, the one with the broad, brown forearms, muscles that could easily hold John up, hold John down, moving sinuously under his skin; the pale-haired bloke on the Tube with tight jeans over a round arse and long legs that John can't help but imagine twisted around him; the duty sergeant down at the Met with the long fingers and the tattoo above the wrist, not quite hidden beneath his cuff, that makes John's mouth water. Sherlock, of course, because it's not enough that John has to steal his hooker, he also has to fantasize about him when he wanks in the shower because Andrew's got an exam the next day and texted him to not come over.

Back at uni, Mary had taken the Pill, until her migraines forced her off it and suddenly her sex drive, always active, had gone through the roof; John remembers her pushing him down on his narrow bed in the halls, yanking her own knickers off and ordering him to put on on a condom; he remembers her climbing on top of him and shoving herself onto him without so much as touching the hem of her dress, riding him with her eyes clenched shut and her lip between her teeth while his hands skimmed desperately over the fabric bunched over her belly and her wetness dripped all over his balls and she gasped, choked and desperate, and came, twice, fast in a row, rippling tight and shocking around him. He remembers that one time she'd shoved him down onto the floor and sat on his face and he'd practically drowned; that one time the condom had broken, so he'd had to pull out, and she'd grabbed his hand and rubbed against him while he tried to finger her and find another condom at the same time. Fingering her had won; she had moaned and wriggled and he hadn't been able to to think about anything other than making her come and come and come, and finally, when she was so limp and exhausted she could barely move, he'd dared to crouch over her and push his cock against her tits until he came all over her chest and neck. He'd hoped he hadn't ruined it; he hadn't. She'd just moaned and pushed one of her breasts up to lick at his come, and John had gasped and wriggled back down and ate her out until he could get it up again, and then finally rolled on another condom and they had had a triumphant, glorious fuck.

It had been the best month of his life, being Mary's personal sex toy, and other than a certain shocked awe at his own good fortune, he hadn't thought much about what she must've been feeling, but he wonders, now, pushing his cock into his hand with his toes curling in the soapy runoff from his hair and chest, if it felt like this, if suddenly the entire mundane world had become pornographic without warning, if she had been sitting in lecture taking notes on ionization with her knickers soaking, thinking about their salt-and-pepper-haired chemistry lecturer who John had never once thought about at the time but who he thinks about, bizarrely, now. He had had a low, silky baritone, but John would be willing to bet money that Sherlock looks better on his knees.

The next evening, there's a knock on the door at Baker Street. Sherlock is sitting on the sofa in his pajamas with his phone, John fully dressed in his chair with his laptop, and Mrs. Hudson calls out, "I've got it, just on my way out," and John's stomach jolts when he hears Andrew's somehow-familiar tread on the stairs. When he looks up, Sherlock is watching him, and John should've known, he should've _known_ , when Sherlock didn't say anything, that Sherlock would—

"Hullo," Andrew says.

"Well, this is a surprise," Sherlock says. He's still watching John.

"I thought, it's Friday, I'll come take John out," Andrew says, and there's a hint of shaky bravado in his voice that takes John a moment to process, and Sherlock exhales a little and sits back.

"Yes," Sherlock says, looking back down at his phone. "Of course. Have a lovely time."

John swallows, a little, and then gets to his feet. He doesn't stay over, and when he comes back early the next morning, Sherlock is waiting for him when John switches on the light.

Sherlock's mouth is tight, stretched flat and thin, and he says, "Bad form."

"He isn't your boyfriend," John bites out.

"No," Sherlock says. "He's yours."

John swallows.

"What are you doing?" Sherlock says. "Do you _know_ what you're doing?"

"Are you seriously about to lecture me on my sex life?" John demands.

"He's in love with you," Sherlock says flatly.

"He—it's not even a week, I—"

"He's _in love with you_ ," Sherlock repeats, and when John looks up at him, Sherlock exhales, short and sharp, and says, "And you know it, don't you?"

John swallows, because Andrew had gasped and panted into John's hair and twisted their fingers together while he fucked John halfway into oblivion, because Andrew's voice aways cracks when he asks John to stay and sometimes John leaves anyway.

"I didn't mean," John starts.

"Of course you didn't," Sherlock snaps, and then scrubs at his face. "I should've seen it coming, all your little _lessons_ , the way you worried—"

"Fuck off," John snaps, hands clenching at his sides.

"I should've known, I should've _known_ when you left on Monday, that you were going to do something so colossally stupid, that you—"

"But he's not any of your business, is he?" John can't help being cruel, not now. "You paid him, so he's not your problem—"

" _You_ are my problem!" Sherlock shouts, and John always notices that, the way Sherlock's voice is pitched just right to resonate in their living room when he's in a mood, how every angry word hangs longer than the others. "You're so _spectacularly_ lacking in self-awareness that you can go to bed with a boy half your age to get back at me—"

"I didn't do it to get back at you!" John cries.

"I have a very hard time believing that, especially given that—"

"Christ, Sherlock, I don't even remember _deciding_!" John's throat feels hot and tight, and he rubs at his forehead but it doesn't help. "I don't do things like this, I just—it happened, and then all I—he asked me not to stop so I didn't stop, I—"

"—you decided that the right way to be kind to him was to go to bed with him again and again and again, until he fell so hard in love with you that I can smell it from halfway down the street—"

"Right," John says, and straightens up.

Sherlock is watching him, his face hard, his mouth drawn so thin it's nearly invisible.

"How do I fix it?" John asks him. "If you know so much about it, how do I fix it?"

"How should I know?" Sherlock snarls, reaching for his coat. "This is why I always _pay for it_."

 

After Sherlock's slammed the door—they'll hear about that from Mrs. Hudson later, he's sure—John crashes out in his own bed and sleeps, badly, for just over five hours. He's still exhausted when he wakes, but it's slipping over towards afternoon and he has things to do. He shaves and puts on his last clean shirt and a pair of jeans that smells alright and then he texts Andrew, _are you home?_

If he was a good person, he'd do it as soon as he got there; if he was a good person, he wouldn't so much as return Andrew's smile. But he's not a good person, and Andrew is achingly pleased to see him, and John tells himself that maybe one more time can make it better, if he does it right, and presses Andrew down against his narrow bed and tries to make it sweet and tender and merciful and then, after, wishes he hadn't, because Andrew's petting his fingers through his hair while John rests his head on Andrew's belly, and John's pretty sure he's not imagining the tiny, sad hitch in Andrew's breath.

"We're breaking up," Andrew murmurs, after a while.

"I didn't mean for this to happen," John says. His throat aches. "I just wanted—I like you, I want you to be happy—"

"Oh, fuck off," Andrew tells him, but he hasn't stopped running his fingertips through John's hair.

"I messed this up," John tells Andrew's skin. "And I'm sorry. I didn't—I haven't ever done something like this before, I used to bring girls fucking _flowers_ , and then I went to Afghanistan and came back as a total arsehole who apparently can't keep it in his pants even when he knows he ought to."

Andrew exhales. "I'm not a kid, you know," he says, despite all evidence to the contrary, and tugs at the longest part of John's hair, just over the swell at the back of his skull. "I knew what I was doing. I knew you were—I knew this was a bad idea. I wanted to do it anyway."

John rubs his face against Andrew's stomach, looks up at his face. Andrew's mouth is solemn, but his hair's a mess and his eyes are wide and dark, and even now John has a hard time taking him seriously, even though he probably ought to. "I'm sorry," John tells him.

"Stop apologizing to me," Andrew says.

"Should I go?" asks John.

Andrew's mouth pulls down, just for a split second, but he doesn't say anything, just keeps running his fingers through John's hair, fingers sliding down behind his ear. After another minute, John closes his eyes, presses his mouth to the soft edge of Andrew's belly, then pulls back, stands up, and gets dressed.

"You should take your sweater," Andrew tells him, and John has to look at him. He's sitting up on the edge of his bed, hunched over, with the flush still fading from his ribs. Andrew points to his desk chair, with John's brown cardigan still draped over the back from last night, and John almost tells him to keep it, but he remembers enough of his ancient breakups to think that probably wouldn't be a favor.

"Thanks," he says. "Um, I'll just—I'm off, then."

Andrew looks up at the ceiling.

John walks home.

 

By the time he gets back to the flat, the sun has set. John sinks into his chair and keeps sinking; he hasn't taken his jacket off and the room is warm enough to make him sleepy, eyes heavy, sliding down in his chair by millimeters until he hears the door click downstairs, rouses himself enough to blink up at Sherlock coming in with a dark, sharp blast of winter evening air, and John's lost nine hours, somewhere, and his stomach hurts.

Sherlock's hair is a mess and his eyes are bright, his mouth red around the edges, and John breathes, "Fuck," and Sherlock says, "Go to hell," without looking at him, and John says, "I ended it with Andrew. How much?"

"Got that one for free, matter of fact; why, taking notes?" Sherlock asks, jerking off his scarf, dropping it and the coat onto the table. His coat slides onto the floor; he doesn't pick it up.

"I worry about the rent," John bites back.

"Don't," Sherlock says. "My expenses have decreased significantly lately."

John flinches and looks away.

Sherlock shuts himself up in his bedroom, but John sits up another hour, two, until he shakes with the cold and the _four a.m., Jesus_ , but the light under Sherlock's door never goes off.

 

In the morning, John's head aches with disrupted sleep patterns and the grotty, residual hormone flush of too much sex after no sex for too long. His tongue feels thick. He's unquestionably dehydrated. He realizes he hasn't eaten anything but a stale donut at Andrew's in over a day. When he comes downstairs, Sherlock's slumped in John's chair with his eyes shut, still wearing his suit trousers and the purple shirt from yesterday, crumpled and wilted. At the creak of the second step from the bottom, Sherlock says, very quietly, "I can't do that again," without opening his eyes.

John swallows.

"I went out." Sherlock explains. "I can't—I can't do that again, John."

John nods, even though Sherlock can't see him, and pads over. He bends down to touch Sherlock's neck, clammy and still shivering with his too-fast pulse, and John jerks his fingers away, fast.

"Are you still," John asks.

"Yes," Sherlock tells him.

"Do you know what," John starts.

"Yes," Sherlock says. "It was mine."

John swallows. "Did you—did you do anything dangerous," he asks, but his voice curves down, like it's not a question.

"I was safe," Sherlock tells him, looking up at him.

It's something, at least. John wishes he could say the same. John gets Sherlock a glass of water, then another, and puts on the kettle for himself. He makes eggs, even though they're anything but appetizing after the smell of the first sizzle sends Sherlock scrambling for the toilet, retching loud enough that John can hear it over the kitchen fan. John eats his damn eggs anyway and brings Sherlock toast, more water. It's far too much like the bad days at uni for his liking, but this was always the way it worked back then, too, wasn't it: glory burning off the ends of glory, then ashes.

"I'm too old for this," Sherlock mumbles, his face still pressed against the porcelain. "Lestrade will be."

He doesn't finish the sentence. After a minute, John crouches down and says, "C'mon, you can't sleep here," and reaches out and drags Sherlock up, drags him over to the sofa, where at least John can keep an eye on him.

Sherlock doesn't eat a bite, but he drinks half the water, then falls asleep, awkward, ungainly, with his limbs folded up funny and the line of buttons on his shirt wrapped a third of the way around his ribs in a way that makes John's throat hurt. After an hour, John eats Sherlock's toast, then texts Lestrade and says, _please don't have anything urgent today. 24 hours._

 

Sherlock sleeps. At four, John unfolds himself from the chair and puts a new, full glass of water by Sherlock's head, then goes to shower. He goes to Tesco and tries, for the first time in a week, to remember that he's an adult—spinach, tomato sauce, whole-wheat pasta, chicken breasts—and comes home to Sherlock, still sleeping, in the last slivers of the sunlight. John puts away the shopping and then slowly, methodically, searches the flat; when Sherlock finally wakes up, it's all sitting on the coffee table. It's all been neatly packaged in the containers Sherlock uses for small quantities of experimental chemicals and none of it is labeled, but John's a doctor and he's lived with Sherlock for almost a year; he may not be able to keep pace with Sherlock on all, or even most, of his cases, but John still has a pretty good idea about how Sherlock's mind works.

Sherlock looks at the table, then up at John. "Spring cleaning a bit early, aren't you," he says. John suspects it was supposed to be cutting, but it mostly just sounds exhausted.

"No," John says. "Nope, it's. It's not mine, you know." He notices he's jiggling his leg, forces himself to stop, then points at a small vial, still better than half full. It was dusty, when he pulled it out. "What's in the—that one?"

"Heroin," Sherlock says.

"Oh, of course," John says, and sighs.

Sherlock watches him, then taps the first five bottles of pills in turn. "Codeine methylbromide, methaqualone, methylenedioxymethamphetamine. I really do have a prescription for Zimovane. Of course you know about the co-codamol."

John nods. He says, "Better living through chemistry." He doesn't bother to make it a question.

"You didn't find all of the cocaine," Sherlock tells him.

John licks his lips and looks up at the ceiling. Sherlock doesn't offer up anything else.

"Well," John says, after a minute. "Suppose I'll make dinner."

He boils the pasta and cooks the chicken in the sauce. He almost forgets the spinach. He tries not to think too much, about any of it, and when he comes back out to tell Sherlock it's ready, Sherlock's sitting up on the sofa, and there's a brown paper bag on the coffee table with the top folded down. Sherlock looks up at him, eyes glittering, mouth thin.

"You want me to take care of that?" John asks.

"Yes," Sherlock says, then adds, quieter, "thank you."

John takes it up to his room, for the time being. He doesn't look inside. He can tell by lifting; not heavy enough.

 

John takes the bag to Lestrade the next day.

"You look like you've been through the wars," Lestrade tells him, then looks inside and sighs. "Christ."

"He's not using again," John tells him.

"That's sure as hell not what it looks like." Lestrade's voice is harsher than John's ever heard it.

"It was." John rubs at his face. "It was a one-off. He knows it was a mistake. Please."

Lestrade says, "I can't have him working with us if he's high."

"He won't be," John says, mouth twisting. "Trust me."

John meets Lestrade's eyes, and Lestrade sighs.

"All right," Lestrade says. "All right. For now."

 

It takes them a few weeks to find normal again. The first few days, Sherlock mostly sleeps and paces; he won't touch his violin. He eats because John makes him, and drinks too much tea; John knows he's been smoking actual cigarettes from the smell, but he never sees him light up. John goes for runs, does push-ups and sit-ups and the stretches he knows he has to do for his shoulder, treats a lot of drunk idiots on holiday down at the surgery. On Wednesday, he goes to a surgery half an hour away for tests and marks the follow-up in the calendar on his phone with a "T" and the address and the time, not that it's such a terribly clever code that Sherlock wouldn't figure it out in ten seconds: it works out to precisely six months and one day, to allow for weekends. John ends up having Christmas dinner with Clara, who apparently thinks she got him in the divorce, and Jezebel, the gentle, aging golden retriever that John had always thought of as Harry's, though he probably should've known better. On Boxing Day, he goes over to Harry's and they have a fry-up and watch action films on DVD; neither of them is feeling particularly festive. Sherlock's in Wiltshire for the weekend.

John's just turning the corner onto Baker Street Monday morning when Sherlock texts him: _Dead goat in a bath. You're not too busy. SH_. John stuffs his phone back into his pocket and walks faster, takes the steps two at a time, and says, "Not our bath, I hope."

Sherlock smirks at him. "Not my style," he says, slipping on his coat. "Knightsbridge."

"Excellent," John says.

"Besides, you just cleaned," Sherlock says.

"Yes, that would be rude," John agrees.

"Well, I'm afraid that _is_ my style," Sherlock says, which John thinks may be something like an apology, and then Sherlock hails them a cab.

The bath, as it turns out, belongs to one Joseph Moller, who came home from visiting friends abroad over Christmas to find his flat ransacked, most of his electronics equipment missing, and, yes, a dead goat in the bath. Moller's a slight, anemic-looking man, about the same age as Sherlock, but clearly not with Sherlock's nerves, since Moller spends the entire police visit deadly pale and twitching, chainsmoking out front of the building and glancing away every time someone comes out, on the off chance that they might be in the act of removing the goat.

"Threat?" John asks, as they're leaving.

"Practical joke," Sherlock says.

"How do you know?" John asks.

"Moller has no backbone," Sherlock says. "If it'd been a threat, it would've been a dead and mutilated goat, or, I suppose, a particularly distasteful part of a dead goat. That goat was just dead. Someone knew how far they could push him without really driving him 'round the bend, and, more significantly, didn't _want_ to drive him 'round the bend."

"Why a goat?" John asks.

"Again," Sherlock says. "It was an old, dead nanny goat. Someone probably went home to the country for the holiday and happened to run into a...pal with a dead goat on their hands. Probably thought, 'I know, let's put it in Moller's bath; that'll be good for a laugh'."

The goat deliverer turns out to be a childhood friend. It's a pity he hadn't thought to lock up, after; the electronics theft is a perfectly genuine crime.

 

The next really serious case they get—"Interesting," Sherlock terms it—is a kidnapping: the husband of a government employee, Imena Wright, whose significance is best expressed when Mycroft casually mentions that he reports to her. Wright is a nice-looking, middle-aged black woman with a somewhat excessively ordinary feel about her; John has the sense that if he'd met her under different circumstances, he'd not remember her at all. But in the car, facing her and Mycroft and sliding silently around London in circumspect loops while she explains the situation, she does make a bit of an impression: practical, calm, possibly very, very dangerous. Her husband had gone to Edinburgh on business and vanished from the train on the way home in the six and a half minutes it had taken his PA to use the toilet; Wright is concerned.

"His PA—" she holds out a file, which John takes; it's topped with a photo of a homely man in his early thirties with no chin. "—Brian Lewis. He's one of mine. Originally, Jason didn't like it, but I insisted. Lewis has been tailed ever since, but it's been four days and he hasn't done anything out of the ordinary, except spend a somewhat inordinate amount of money on ladies' underwear."

"Do you know anything about his girlfriend?" John asks.

"He doesn't have one," Wright tells him.

"Boring," Sherlock says, taking the file from John and flipping through it quickly. "Not worth clutching your pearls over the cross-dressers in government, John; you'd never let go. What does your husband do, Ms. Wright?"

"He's a materials chemist," she says.

"Less boring," Sherlock says, looking up. "You don't think it was to get to you?"

"I don't know why he's been kidnapped," she says frankly. "I think there are a number of possibilities, none of them pleasant, and I can't afford to disregard the possibility that it _was_ to get to me, though you're absolutely correct—he's a perfectly worthwhile target on his own, and I'm inclined to think that's significant."

"Does he have a lover?" Sherlock asks.

"Sherlock," John says, quietly.

"No," she says. Looking at John, she says, "He's watched. Not by me. But we did check. I'm not just speaking out of idle feminine hope, Dr. Watson."

John flushes. This past month, John's been watching Sherlock, probably too closely, but he hasn't found any significant chunks of time that he doesn't know how to account for; he wonders if Mycroft knows differently. He'd never ask. He tries to put the thought away.

"We know he didn't exit after Grantham," Wright explains. "We had agents in place by then. Lewis did everything correctly, but there was a slight delay—at first he thought Jason had just stepped away. Lewis didn't leave the carriage until after they'd pulled away in York."

"He disappeared on Friday?" Sherlock asks. Wright nods. "The train won't be any help, they could be anywhere at this point. I need to keep this," he adds, holding up Brian Lewis's file.

Wright nods again. As the car pulls back up in front of the flat, Mycroft says, "Keep in contact with me, Sherlock. I'll pass along whatever you need."

"Right," Sherlock says, for once without a cutting footnote, and opens the door, holds it for John.

"You think it's the PA?" John asks.

"No," Sherlock tells him, whipping out his phone. "But I do think he's lying; Wright wasn't on the train in York. You might want to pack a bag; we may need to leave in a hurry."

 

The next three days take them to York, Carlisle, back down to London, out to Kent, back to London again.

"You don't normally do this much legwork," John observes, crouching behind him as they sidle along a narrow ledge. The next bullet pings off the drainpipe about five feet up and to John's left.

"Well," Sherlock says. "The problem with Mycroft's cases tends to be that if they could be solved without exertion, he would take care of them himself. Jump."

John follows him down, landing not quite well enough on mud-slicked asphalt with a shock that reverberates up through his knees.

"Fuck," he breathes as he skids, pain radiating down through both calves, but he keeps running; the pain kicks off a reaction in his arms that he can't quite shake off, and an hour later he has to use both hands to steady the gun as he shoots one of the kidnappers through the forehead while she's trying, badly, to hold Jason Wright's unconscious body in front of her like a shield. Then Sherlock accidentally kicks John in the face while they're trying to drag Mr. Wright back up out of the water before he drowns, and John's nose bleeds everywhere while they wait for the paramedics; after they arrive, Sherlock is bright and expansive as he explains things to Mycroft. Imena Wright is holding her husband's hand in the back of the ambulance and talking to him, too low for John to hear, but he can see her mouth moving, can see her husband rubbing his thumb against her palm.

By the time they make it into the cab, Sherlock's shutting down; the whole ride home he sits utterly silent and utterly still, until John might wonder if Sherlock was still breathing if he knew him less well. John wishes he could get past the awful, sick, crawling feeling in his stomach, but he can't; he knows that it's been almost a month, and he doesn't know exactly what Sherlock means when he talks about a "limited time frame."

Upstairs, Sherlock settles into a chair but doesn't take off his coat.

"Well," John says. "Tea?"

Sherlock exhales. "No," he says. "Don't think so, thanks."

John nods and nods and nods. "You're going to—you're going out."

Sherlock looks at him.

John swallows and rubs at his forehead. He says, quietly, "Please don't."

Sherlock doesn't reply, and after a minute, John adds, "It's just, I actually think I'm going to lose my mind," voice just barely steady, "if you go out and pay another university student for sex."

"I wouldn't have to if you hadn't—" Sherlock starts, voice sharp, but then he stops and turns, looks out the window.

John's nose still hurts, though it's stopped bleeding. His knees ache, but at least his hand has stopped shaking. John swallows again, against the lump in his chest, too hot, too heavy, and says, "Can't we just."

Sherlock exhales. "No," he says.

John looks up at the ceiling. He doesn't know why he's doing this, quite, but— "I like you," he says, utterly inadequate. "I'm very rarely sure why, but I—I like you, and I—" he swallows, trying to make more space— "and I care about you, and I—"

" _No_ ," Sherlock repeats, louder, like maybe John hadn't heard him.

"And I _know_ you," John continues, raising his voice to compete. "I know you so much better than they do, I know you can't—it's safe, I know you don't care so much about me, so."

"No," Sherlock says again, voice tense. "I won't do that to—it's, it's dangerous."

John licks his lips. "And here I am."

There's a long silence. John feels hot, ashamed.

"I do care about you." Sherlock's voice is quiet. "If you think I don't—"

"No, I—I know." John sighs. "I do know that." He swallows, then says, "I just—never mind. It doesn't matter."

Sherlock is silent for a long while. "It's just not." He exhales. "I just can't—I can't, in the right way."

John looks at him. Sherlock's eyes are dark, and his mouth is drawn thin, almost invisible. He's still wearing his coat, and he has his hands stuffed in his pockets.

"The right way," John echoes.

Sherlock scrubs at the back of his hair, then tugs off his scarf. "The way other people do," he says, standing, and then, "Tea?"

John nods. Sherlock hangs up his coat. Sherlock makes the tea. John finds the last third of a box of stale biscuits in one of the cupboards, and stays up an extra hour and a half pretending to watch telly. It works; Sherlock stays in, and goes to bed alone.

 

The next case starts as a private concern and ends with the police; the blackmailer, Gosburt Turner, is wanted for a number of crimes above and beyond making life miserable for upper middle class professionals with skeletons in their closets. John can tell that Sherlock finds Turner interesting: he's impulsive, violent, ugly, and charming; the trail littered with as many broken hearts as humiliated victims. They hunt him down to a warehouse in Surrey, but he spots them before the police have arrived and John and Sherlock don't have any choice but give chase, which culminates in possibly the shortest hostage situation in history.

It goes like this: on his way up to the office to abstract his very profitable collection of compromising data, Turner stumbles over a length of PVC that's fallen over the path and drops his gun, which clatters over the edge of the rail and down; John hopes Sherlock will think to grab it. Then John, flush with his seeming victory, makes a blind turn into the offices too fast and trips over Turner, and Turner grabs John's wrists and twists them back, yanks him around, and presses a knife to his throat—a folding knife, too, not even a proper weapon, but John knows better than to think that it wouldn't do the trick. John's gun is still tucked in the back of his waistband, but neither of them can grab it without Turner letting go. John heard Sherlock's feet on the stair the second he started grappling with Turner, and now Sherlock's already rounding the corner, Turner's gun up and out.

"Drop it, Mr. Holmes," Turner shouts, pressing the knife up so that John stills, reflexive, pain tracing the arc of the blade; "drop it or I'll—"

Sherlock blinks, then fires.

John feels a sharp line draw itself across the top of his ear, and warmth spatter all over the back of his head and neck, and then the knife falls and Turner falls and John's just standing there with his ear bleeding and Sherlock exhaling, careful, and flicking on the safety on the gun.

John swallows and breathes, swallows and breathes. Sherlock comes up to him, touches his hair, his cheek, his throat. "You shot him," John says. His mouth is numb.

"He was going to kill you," Sherlock replies. "I'm not as good a shot as you; I grazed your ear."

"He was trying to negotiate," John says.

"I didn't trust him," Sherlock tells him. "He didn't know how to use a knife. Your neck is bleeding."

"I can't believe you shot him," John says, which is when the police arrive, and then John falls silent, because Lestrade is saying it all for him, over and over and over again.

 

Lestrade argues with Sherlock while the medics patch John up and the other officers watch the security footage in silence, Donovan's eyes flicking uneasily up to Sherlock and back down again, up to Sherlock and back down again. John can see the footage past Hopkins' slight frame, and he doesn't think there's much question about the timing, at least: the blood on his neck is clearly visible before the flash of the gun, from any angle they've got it on, but he knows there'll have to be a trial; most rules just bend for Sherlock but not this one, _not this one_ , John thinks, in frustration and despair. Of course, then there's two generic-looking young men in elegant suits, apparently arriving from nowhere, very charming, very apologetic, very quietly whisking away things that might be inconvenient for Sherlock Holmes; when Lestrade tells Sherlock that he can go, his voice is tight and his cheeks are red, and there's a black Rolls waiting outside, just, _of course_. It's just the driver, alone; he takes them to Baker Street without a word. John's choking on mingled anger and gratitude, and he can't make up his mind if it's better or worse that when they get home, there's a very small basket of fruit on their coffee table with a card that says, _With many thanks, Imena Wright_.

Shelock hangs up his coat, his scarf. His hands are steady, but there's still dried blood—John's blood—staining the skin around his fingernails. Sherlock goes to into the kitchen, over to the sink.

John follows him, puts his hand on the doorframe. "Did you know?" he asks. His voice is shaky.

"Did I know what?" Sherlock asks, rolling up his sleeves.

"Did you know that she would fix it, did you know that you could shoot someone in the head and—"

"No," Sherlock says. He turns on the sink.

"Because, because if that's part of—if that's part of the deal—"

"I didn't know," Sherlock says, soaping up his hands. His voice is perfectly even. "I would like to point out that you did the same for me, once."

"Not the same," John says. His throat feels tight, constricted. The bandage tugs at his skin. "Turner was trying to negotiate."

Sherlock rinses his hands, dries them neatly. John's blood is gone. Sherlock turns and meets his eyes squarely. He says, "I didn't know what to do when Moriarty took you. I'm not willing to go through that again."

John sucks down a startled breath, steps back, because suddenly they're back, it's come back to this, but he doesn't—

"I didn't know what to do," Sherlock repeats. His voice is perfectly even. He could be talking about the weather. "The first time, he had you and I didn't know what to do. Doing that again was not—I was. Unwilling. So I took care of it. Your ear is bleeding, a bit."

John wipes at his ear. The bandage on his throat itches. Sherlock is watching him, mouth in a thin, unhappy line.

"You killed a man who was trying to negotiate with you," John repeats, because that's it, that's the crux of everything, Sherlock can get past that but John can't, he _can't_ , he—

"His terms were about to become unacceptable," Sherlock says.

"And you're infallible, are you?" John rubs at his face, desperate.

"No," Sherlock says, quietly.

John looks up at him, because he wasn't expecting—

"I'm not infallible," Sherlock says. "I can't—I know I can't trust my own decisions, always, anymore." He shifts, shoulders tugged in; awkward. "I mean," he says, "I am aware that I love you, so obviously, I should question my own judgment, a bit."

John stares at him. John—John _knows_ this conversation, John has _had_ this conversation, all the way back to April Hennessey, back in Year Ten: _you make me stupid; you mess with my head; I can't think when I'm around you_. But it's the first time he's heard someone say it and known that it was an insult.

"Right," John says, and turns.

He forgets his jacket. Doesn't matter. He can't go back.

 

John walks. It's cold—beyond cold, really, and he knows that it's cold but he doesn't really feel it. He can't believe Sherlock, sometimes; he can't understand how Sherlock can do the things he does, how someone who thinks as much as Sherlock does can do these things, these things that would paralyze any normal person, with no thought at all. He realizes he's walking towards Sarah's, and forces himself to stop, turn back. He knows that if he shows up on her doorstep with no jacket and a bandage on his neck and a raw, red line across the top of his left ear, still sticky, she won't be home. He keeps replaying that moment, over and over and over again in his head: Sherlock, blink, shot. Sherlock didn't even let Turner finish his sentence. There are rules, John knows, there are rules that every last damn person in society obeys without question, but Sherlock breaks them without hesitation.

At a crossing, John misses the light and spends the wait stomping his feet, rubbing his hands, stomping his feet, rubbing his hands. The bandage on his throat still tugs at his skin. His ear still hurts. His heart is still pounding, though, and his hands itch; he hates that this still slams into him, every damn time, no matter what. He hates that he can know that his flatmate—his colleague, his _partner_ —just killed a man who was trying to negotiate, mid-sentence, and John can still be revved up like this. He realizes he's standing outside Jenn's building—Jenn, of all people! Jenn, who out of all the people John's slept with since coming home from Afghanistan has been the only one to tell it to him straight, to say, _Sorry, this just isn't for me, I'm not interested in living this way_. Christ. John's not safe in his own head tonight.

He can't help it replaying it, over and over and over again, _I am aware that I love you, so obviously, I should question my own judgment, a bit_ , like that's the logical end to that conversation, like it's somehow John's fault. John's chest hurts. _I am aware that I love you, so obviously, I should question my own judgment, a bit_. John exhales, hard. There's nothing he can do with that. He doesn't think anyone would know what to do with that.

The worst part is that it's not really even Sherlock's fault, and John knows it. Jesus. If it were just Sherlock, John would leave, John would've left a year ago. If it were Sherlock, he wouldn't go back tonight. But John knows he'll go back. He _knows_ that. He knew it when he left, chest tight and aching; he knows that Sherlock can shoot a man who's trying to make terms and John'll go back, John'll keep going back. John knows that Sherlock came within about an inch of killing him and rarely thanks him for tea and always makes a mess in the bath and sees no problem with paying twenty-year-old boys for sex or hiding drugs in their flat or keeping the wrong kinds of secrets or saying awful things just because he's angry or frustrated or bored, but John also knows that there's still spatters of Turner's blood in his hair and he's pumped up and a little turned on; he knows that he could run down the rest of the list: Sarah, Jenn, Laurel, end up standing outside Andrew's flat if he wanted to, or—or Madeline's, or picking up the barman with the smooth brown forearms that could hold him up, hold him down, because these are the things he does! This is the person he is! He knows he won't do anything right tonight and he knows that no matter what he does tonight he'll go back to Baker Street tomorrow. The problem, the _heart_ of the problem, is that John knows that he always has a choice, but he just doesn't like the good ones. He's staring up at the numbers, 221B. His heart is pounding. He opens the door. He takes the stairs two at a time and stops up short, because Sherlock's standing in the living room, pointing John's gun at John's face.

Sherlock watches him. His eyes are glittering, mouth pulled thin, and he's holding the gun with both hands, perfectly and utterly still. The safety's off.

For a split second, John thinks both paths through at once: _how can he/of course he is/no normal person pulls a gun/no normal person stays/he says all that crap, but then he/but it makes sense to me, doesn't it? It makes sense to me, too_.

John swallows. Then he holds his hands up, palms out, reaches them up, slowly, and puts them on the back of his head.

Sherlock follows him with the gun as John drops to his knees.

For one long moment, Sherlock is utterly, perfectly still. John doesn't say anything. His throat is dry, heart pounding. Sherlock still has John's gun pointed at John's face, steady, unwavering. Both hands.

Finally Sherlock says, "If I told you to lie down, to lie down on the ground, face down, what would you do?"

John swallows. Jesus.

He puts his right hand—only his right hand, careful, careful—out, not far, palm open wide, aimed up, and then puts it on the floor, slowly lowers himself down with his palm and his left elbow, sliding his legs out straight behind him, one at a time. He presses his forehead to the carpet, then puts his right hand back up behind his head.

For a minute Sherlock doesn't move. Then the light shifts in the periphery of John's vision as Sherlock steps over, slides down onto his knees, not quite arm's length in front of the top of John's head.

"Why are you doing this?" Sherlock says. It sounds almost, but not quite, merely curious.

John swallows. He can't make his throat move. After a moment, he feels something stroke over his hair, light, and then press down against the crown of his head: the barrel of the gun. John gasps. _Christ_.

"Why?" Sherlock repeats, lower, sharper.

"I—I want to," John manages, just barely. God, his skin is on fire. " _Sherlock_ —"

"I told you I loved you," Sherlock reminds him. The gun presses harder, for just a split second, then immediately relaxes again, like Sherlock didn't mean to do it. Sherlock adds, "You know that doesn't change anything."

"Yes," John breathes, because Jesus, he knows, he— "I know."

Sherlock's quiet for a long, stretched-out moment. John can barely breathe. He can't think at all.

"I do know how to use a gun," Sherlock says, finally, "in case you've forgotten," and that time, John can tell that the additional pressure is wholly deliberate. John can't hold back the noise that catches in his throat.

"No," John whispers. He swallows, heart pounding. "I wouldn't be lying here if you didn't." It's the truth. His voice shakes.

Sherlock exhales, short and sharp.

John doesn't move, doesn't move, doesn't move. His cock is half-hard, trapped uncomfortably between his body and the floor, and he can't quite swallow the shame that goes along with that, but Sherlock's still holding the gun to his head and John's fingertips feel hot where they're pressed into his own hair. The skin on the back of John's neck tingles for no reason. It feels like licking a battery.

Sherlock draws the gun down the side of John's head, nestles the barrel behind John's left ear, still stinging, and Sherlock breathes, noisy: in, out, in.

Finally Sherlock murmurs, "You always surprise me."

John swallows. He doesn't say anything.

After a moment, Sherlock asks, "If I put the gun aside, will you run again?"

John closes his eyes.

"It's just, it fully occupies my right hand," Sherlock explains. "But. You can't leave again tonight. So. We can continue like this, if it's necessary."

"Not necessary," John replies. His voice is thick.

Sherlock is still. John wishes, a little, that he could see him. John doesn't ever want him to move.

"I won't run," John tells him. " _Sherlock_." His fingers clench in his own hair, just barely.

"All right," Sherlock says, "Okay. All right."

The second the gun leaves John's hair, John sucks in a breath. He barely thinks, just pulls himself forward with his hands, scant inches, and buries his face in the angular slope of Sherlock's knees. His hands keep clenching and unclenching, shaking, the sides of Sherlock's trousers occasionally brushing against his fingertips, and then Sherlock's hands come down into his hair, cool and hesitant and terribly careful.

John exhales, and goes still.

 

On the eighteenth of March, Mycroft collects them at seven in the morning. John's not quite half awake, and the backs of his teeth still hurt. At least Mycroft has brought them pastries.

"I'd usually be surprised at you for taking this," Mycroft tells Sherlock, lips curved and mocking, "but I suppose you think you're an entirely different man these days. Had enough relaxation to last you for the next year or two, have you?"

Sherlock snarls at him. Mycroft hands him a cup of tea, looking more smugly pleased than John thought possible.

"Really, Sherlock," Mycroft says. "You make it so easy."

"Well, if he's not a challenge," John says, hands fisting on his thighs.

Sherlock's not had any work for over a week. He's been playing that bizarre twelve-tone bollocks that makes John's skin feel like it's crawling off his body and not sleeping and bothering John when he's trying to blog; John takes a perverse delight in not telling Mycroft any of that, even though he's positive that Mycroft knows the first and most important detail, namely: Sherlock is in an unspeakably foul mood. Mycroft raises an eyebrow at him. John raises an eyebrow right back.

"When it comes to this, John, you're not anywhere near my pay grade," Mycroft tells him, mouth quirking up in amusement.

"You might be surprised," John says. "I do live with your brother."

"Ah, yes," Mycroft says. "You see, I forget, sometimes, that your agency is involved at all. My brother can be such a very...overpowering sort of person, when he wants to be."

"But me, I'm just along for the ride," John agrees. Sherlock turns toward the window. John doesn't have to look at him to know that he's smiling. John relaxes into his seat.

Mycroft's eyes narrow. "Hmm," he says. "Well. Of course, with your background, that might be appealing. Not needing to make your own decisions."

John's mouth quirks. "Well, naturally," he says. "Much easier to just tag around after Sherlock and let him do all the thinking for me."

Mycroft frowns. John just smiles back at him. He's not touching Sherlock at all, but he's still aware of his body; Sherlock smells like his shampoo.

"You know, of course," Mycroft says, relaxing, "that Sherlock doesn't _have_ lovers."

"Well, of course he doesn't," John says. "If he did, I'd shoot them, so. Better all around."

Sherlock's shoulders jerk, and John risks a glance over at him. Sherlock's never very good at holding back laughter, when he actually feels a situation calls for it, but he's trying; he clears his throat, and squints out John's window, leaning over as he does. "Ah, um, is it. So, our flight." He leans back into his seat, but his leg stays pressed lightly against John's, and John feels a sudden swell of fondness, tight in his chest. Sherlock continues, "So we're flying direct?"

"Yes," Mycroft says, eyes narrowed.

"First class?" Sherlock asks.

"I'm sending you to find a forger undermining the euro," Mycroft says. "I'm not sending you on a romantic minibreak to Rome."

John snorts, and then giggles.

Sherlock clears his throat.

John leans over to grab another pastry.

Mycroft's brow wrinkles fractionally, then relaxes. "Oh, of course," he sighs. "Of course, of course. I should've known." He sighs again, presses his fingers to the bridge of his nose. "I _am_ sending you on a romantic minibreak to Rome."

John laughs outright at that. Sherlock looks at him askance, but he's smiling.

**Author's Note:**

> John briefly references [John Godfrey Saxe's version of "The Blind Men and the Elephant"](http://www.noogenesis.com/pineapple/blind_men_elephant.html) and [this fun mnemonic](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mnemonic_verse_of_monarchs_in_England#The_verse) for remembering the English monarchs.
> 
> In addition to T., Q., and T.'s most excellent assistance, [](http://sh_britglish.livejournal.com/profile)[**sh_britglish**](http://sh_britglish.livejournal.com/) and [](http://archiveofourown.org/users/red_adam)[**red_adam**](http://archiveofourown.org/users/red_adam)'s [Brit-pick Hints for Sherlock Authors](http://archiveofourown.org/works/259535) were also invaluable sources for terminology and cultural whatsits. I am an American and I write using American spelling; I do care about getting cultural Britishisms right, but it doesn't bother me if I see "colour" or "realise" in an American fandom story, so I similarly hope that "color" and "realize" won't be too jarring for you. ♥


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